• Orion Health Submits Comments on Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement Draft

    SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – February 27, 2018 – Orion Health has provided public comments showing full support of the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC)’s Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) draft guidance. Orion Health believes this framework is desperately needed in the current healthcare environment, where data is housed in siloes across the U.S. with very little sharing. Having an infrastructure in place to aid in the exchange of data will hopefully facilitate the interoperability needed to enable population health and precision medicine improvements.

    Orion Health believes that the intent of the ONC and TEFCA is aligned with that of Congress and the 21st Century Cures Act, ensuring the availability of the patient medical record across the healthcare continuum. This capability is critical to the success of healthcare interoperability, future healthcare improvements and reduction in the total cost of healthcare. Interoperability will allow for better investigation of healthcare fraud, create greater collaboration between the provider, payer and research organizations, while devaluing the healthcare record on the black market, thus creating a more secure environment. Though requirements covering patient consent, privacy, matching, and security need to be clarified, the framework for interoperability is critical and should have been created prior to the digitization of the healthcare record.

    “Orion Health is fully supportive of the steps the ONC is taking to create a nationwide interoperability framework. Though there are challenges in the initial framework, it is a definite step in the right direction,” said Gerard Scheitlin, Orion Health’s chief risk officer and vice president of security, risk, assurance & customer excellence.

    Orion Health has fully reviewed TEFCA, and the additional questions asked by the ONC. In the structure of TEFCA, Orion Health would be considered a Broker, supplying the technology and security for both HINs and QHINs. To view the full comments, please click here.

     

    About Orion Health
    Orion Health is a global health technology company that provides solutions which enable healthcare to more than 100 million patients globally. Built on an open platform, Orion Health is a leading provider of interoperability, population health management and precision medicine solutions. The company employs over 1200 people around the world and is committed to continual innovation, investing substantially in research and development to cement its position at the forefront of precision medicine. For more information visit www.orionhealth.com 

    Media Contact
    Marcia Rhodes
    Amendola Communications
    [email protected]
    480-664-8412 x 15

    Posted 2.28.2018

  • Introducing Health Catalyst Touchstone: The Next-Generation AI-Powered Healthcare Benchmarking and Performance Improvement Solution

    Survey of healthcare leaders supports need for improved benchmarking

     

    SALT LAKE CITY – February 27, 2018 – Health Catalyst, a leader in data analytics, decision support and outcomes improvement, today launched Health Catalyst® Touchstone™, a breakthrough analytics application featuring next-generation benchmarking and prioritization capabilities powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) to supercharge healthcare improvement initiatives.

    A survey of 100 hospital and health system executives conducted this month by Health Catalyst confirmed that benchmarking is as important as regulatory requirements in determining organizational improvement priorities. Survey respondents also highlighted the importance of integrating benchmarks with analytics to correct deficiencies in current approaches to benchmarking.

    For most healthcare organizations, the process of selecting opportunities for performance improvement is under-informed by data.  A key problem is that benchmarking data, used to compare an organization’s processes to those of top-performing organizations nationwide, is notoriously difficult to explore. Users must sift through hundreds of benchmarks to uncover opportunities for improvement, yet lack visibility into where they are performing well and the causes of underperformance. Moreover, most benchmarks address only inpatient performance, ignoring the comparative data from care settings outside the hospital that is essential to population health management.

    Touchstone not only resolves these problems but also expands the definition of benchmarking to include prioritized improvement recommendations.

    Developed in partnership with some of the nation’s most prestigious health systems, and leveraging Health Catalyst’s proven ability to manage trillions of data points, Touchstone proactively recommends the top improvement opportunities from across the full continuum of care. Its intelligent user experience makes it simple for even non-analysts to drill into opportunities to discover the specific causes of underperformance. That democratization of benchmarking to front-line healthcare workers, along with built-in AI-powered risk adjustment models, enables Touchstone to significantly accelerate improvement efforts, delivering better performance and competitive advantage.

    “Health Catalyst Touchstone is a breakthrough that we’re confident will significantly advance our outcomes improvement efforts,” said David Wild, MD, Vice President of Lean Promotion at the University of Kansas Hospital, which helped to develop and test Touchstone. “We struggle with other benchmarking tools that are very comprehensive but don’t point you in the direction of improvement. With Touchstone we’re able to get to the ‘why’ not just the ‘what’ and to get there in real-time without hours of manual work. It’s faster, easier access to data to improve decisions, so we want to put in the hands of our entire leadership team.”

    Lara F. Terry, MD, MPH, Medical Director of Clinical Analytics for Partners HealthCare’s Center for Population Health, which also contributed to Touchstone’s development, added, “Benchmarks are key to ongoing performance improvement. We decided to partner with Health Catalyst on Touchstone so that we could compare our risk adjusted performance to similar healthcare systems as well as national benchmarks. Touchstone Recommendation Engine automates the process of finding and prioritizing the opportunities where we can make the biggest impact.”

     

    Hundreds of Billions of Patient Facts
    The scale of the data available for analysis and benchmarking by Touchstone reaches into the hundreds of billions. In making its recommendations, Touchstone is able to review over 300 billion patient facts generated by more than 600 million patient visits, including 125 million distinct patients.

    “Healthcare organizations are laser focused on making sustainable improvements in clinical, financial, and operational outcomes. But no organization has unlimited resources, nor unlimited data at their fingertips, so knowing where to focus can often feel like a shot in the dark,” said Dan Burton, CEO of Health Catalyst. “The critical starting point for making improvements is identifying and prioritizing the biggest opportunities for improvement, knowing where you are performing well, and understanding the causes of under-performance so they can be fixed.”

     

    Old approaches to improvement identification and benchmarking miss the mark
    Current benchmarking tools are built on antiquated technologies and are primarily focused on performance monitoring rather than recommending and driving sustained improvements. Unable to drill into data to reveal the cause of benchmark failures, current tools cannot tell organizations how to make improvements. Their high cost, rudimentary user interfaces, and limited use by a small number of professionals hampers their ability to democratize data and accelerate improvements.

    Moreover, current benchmarking tools provide either inpatient or ambulatory benchmarks, but rarely both. As a result, it is difficult to monitor performance across the continuum of care, making population health management less effective.

    Touchstone resolves these and other problems for healthcare leaders by combing through data from electronic health records, claims, cost-accounting datasets, operations, and external benchmarks to provide:

    • Risk-adjusted benchmarking—reveals an organization’s performance data across the continuum of care and in context, at the point of decision-making via an intuitive user interface
    • Intelligent direction— using AI and Elasticsearch, an in-memory NoSQL database capable of querying billions of records in less than 1 second, Touchstone guides users to the data and analyses of greatest relevance to their work and to the organization’s goals. The AI accounts for variation in care, external benchmarks, trending analysis, and outlier detection to recommend how improvements can be made.
    • Ranked list of improvement opportunities—helps users prioritize initiatives based on projected clinical, financial, and operational improvements and associated dollar value
    • Detailed analytics—provides dynamic data exploration, real-time filtering, and drill-down to help users explore the factors driving performance issues
    • Democratized benchmarking—makes benchmarking available to as many people as the organization wants, speeding the sharing of insights leading to improvements

    “Traditional products have encouraged benchmarking to mediocrity, not excellence.  If the best-performing organization in the country is still only achieving mediocre clinical and financial results, today’s benchmarking products propagate that mediocrity,” said Dale Sanders, President of Technology for Health Catalyst. “We populate Touchstone based upon very granular data contained in the Health Catalyst Data Operating System. The technology behind Touchstone is the most current in the world. We borrowed AI and software technologies from great companies like Amazon and Netflix so that the end users of Touchstone see, not just comparative benchmarks, but also recommendations from our machine learning and AI algorithms to improve their performance.”

     

    Inpatient and Population Health Modules
    Touchstone is currently available in two modules addressing the most pressing clinical, operational, and financial improvement needs of health systems.

    Touchstone’s Inpatient Module discovers areas of excellence within an organization compared to national benchmarks; and identifies inpatient performance opportunities against risk-adjusted benchmarks for metrics such as mortality, length of stay (LOS), readmissions, and variable direct costs (supplies, labor, drug, etc.).  The Inpatient Module highlights care processes that have both high variation in cost and poor outcomes as areas that offer the greatest opportunity for improvement.

    Touchstone’s Population Health Module enables organizational performance against risk-adjusted benchmarks for metrics such as cost (per-member-per-month), utilization, morality, LOS, and readmission. Using the Population Health Module, organizations can gain insights into its highest-performing primary care physicians in a network, populations based on chronic conditions and for whom care can be improved, and compares its health plan’s performance to similar plans across a specific region and the nation.

    Common Headaches Relieved
    The state-of-the-art outcomes improvement and benchmarking capabilities of Touchstone have the power to solve extremely common problems for healthcare leaders across the C-Suite and at the department level.

    Population Health Module:

    • A population health analyst wants to understand how to improve the ACO’s performance. Touchstone recommends an opportunity to reduce inpatient utilization in the diabetic population attributed to the organization’s Medicare MSSP contract. After drilling into the application’s “explore” tab, the analyst discovers that high inpatient utilization is being driven by patients attributed to five primary care providers who have visit utilization rates 80 percent lower than the risk-adjusted benchmark. The analyst recommends scheduling the physicians’ patients for wellness visits.
    • A health plan analyst looking for opportunities to improve benefit design is directed by Touchstone to an orthopedics doctor who performs knee replacements that are 20 percent less expensive than the benchmark, with a readmission rate that is 15 percent lower. The following year, the plan augments its benefit design to drive more volume to the high-performing doctor.

    Inpatient Module:

    • A program manager in a hospital’s surgical department uses Touchstone to look for opportunities to lower costs and improve outcomes. Touchstone recommends an opportunity to improve the mortality rate for CABG procedures, currently running 90 percent higher than the risk-adjusted benchmark would expect.  Drilling into the data, the manager finds that three physicians’ cases are driving the majority of the high mortality rates and variable direct cost of supplies is correlated with these higher-than-expected mortality rates.  The manager deploys a clinical analyst to investigate the specific drivers of the cost differential, positing that if there are discrepancies in the way these three providers deliver care they could be rectified to reduce overall mortality and cost.

    Free Version Available to Health Catalyst Customers
    Interested customers of Health Catalyst can get started using Touchstone Public, a limited edition available at no cost. Contact your Health Catalyst representative for more information and to unlock the free version today.

    What Customers Can Expect in the Future
    Health Catalyst believes that with the right type and amount of data, all things are possible. Our ability to understand and transform healthcare in the future will depend on the breadth and depth of data available—including self-reported data, genomic data, social determinants, and more.

    “It’s the breadth and depth of data that Touchstone delivers that matters most to enabling an unprecedented feature engineering set for AI and machine learning applications,” said Sanders. “If we are successful with Touchstone and it lives up to its full potential, we humbly believe that it could become a national asset for better understanding of both population health and decision support in medicine.”

     Survey Reveals Importance of Benchmarking
    Health Catalyst conducted an online survey in February 2018 to determine typical responses to existing benchmarking technology. The 100 respondents included 14 CEOs, 16 CFOs, and 23 CIOs in organizations ranging from community hospitals (36%) to integrated delivery systems (27%) and academic medical centers (10%). Findings included:

    • In determining where to focus their improvement initiatives, “performance against benchmarks” (22%) was nearly as important to respondents as regulatory requirements (25%) and improvement team recommendations (24%).
    • Participants felt that easier integration of benchmarks into existing analytics is the No. 1 way to make them more helpful, followed by more timely data, easier access to the benchmarks themselves, and integration of benchmark comparisons into strategic prioritization and decision-making tools.
    • Organizations currently use and would like to continue to use benchmarks across all categories almost equally (operations, outpatient, inpatient, regulatory/reporting, and severity of illness).

     

    Learn More About Touchstone
    To learn more about Touchstone, schedule a demo, or download a datasheet, visit https://www.healthcatalyst.com/product/touchstone/.

     

    About Health Catalyst
    Health Catalyst is a next-generation data, analytics, and decision-support company, committed to being a catalyst for massive, sustained improvements in healthcare outcomes. We are the leaders in a new era of advanced predictive analytics for population health and value-based care with a suite of machine learning-driven solutions, decades of outcomes-improvement expertise, and an unparalleled ability to integrate data from across the healthcare ecosystem. Our proven data warehousing and analytics platform helps improve quality, add efficiency and lower costs in support of more than 85 million patients for organizations ranging from the largest US health system to forward-thinking physician practices. Our technology and professional services can help you keep patients engaged and healthy in their homes and workplaces, and we can help you optimize care delivery to those patients when it becomes necessary. We are grateful to be recognized by Fortune, Gallup, Glassdoor, Modern Healthcare and a host of others as a Best Place to Work in technology and healthcare. Visit www.healthcatalyst.com, and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. 

     

    Media Contact:
    Todd Stein
    Amendola Communications
    916-346-4213
    [email protected]

    Posted 2.28.2018

  • MedChi Teams up with DrFirst and CRISP to Tackle the Opioid Crisis in Maryland

    Collaboration gives Maryland physicians the first mobile app with PDMP query compliance built into the e-prescribing workflow

     

    ANNAPOLIS, MD – February 27, 2018 – Two of Maryland’s most innovative healthcare organizations have joined forces to give Maryland prescribers a mobile tool to efficiently access Maryland’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) data from within the e-prescribing workflow. MedChi, The Maryland State Medical Society, has teamed with DrFirst, a Maryland-based leader in e-prescribing and medication management solutions to bring iPrescribeSM to prescribers using the PDMP data displayed to healthcare providers by Maryland’s state-designated health information exchange, CRISP who operates the state’s PDMP. iPrescribe is the first mobile medication management app that allows physicians to comply with the Maryland mandate to consult the PDMP. MedChi and DrFirst are making iPrescribe available to Maryland prescribers free for the first year.

    Maryland prescribers will be required to query and review the PDMP database prior to initially prescribing an opioid or benzodiazepine for a patient starting July 1, 2018. Previously, PDMP access for many prescribers involved leaving the clinical workflow in order to view the patient’s history of opioid and other controlled drug prescriptions within CRISP, adding time and complexity to an already complex process. The collaboration with MedChi, DrFirst, and CRISP streamlines the PDMP query process by making it available in the e-prescribing workflow through the iPrescribe mobile app.

    “Through our relationship with CRISP and the PDMP integration with DrFirst’s iPrescribe, we give Maryland prescribers the ability to more easily and efficiently comply with the PDMP query mandate.  The improved access to patient data empowers physicians to make fully informed prescribing decisions, providing appropriate pain medication to patients who need it, and identify patients who are at risk for opioid addiction,” said Gene Ransom, MedChi’s chief executive officer. “Our goal is to put this tool in the hands of every prescriber in Maryland.”

    “As a Maryland-based organization, we are excited to support technological solutions that put tools in the hands of the  provider community that can help combat the opioid crisis in our state,” said Brandon Neiswender, VP and COO at CRISP. “We can provide authorized users easier access to patient data to better inform clinical decisions and address patient safety and opioid overuse concerns.”

    “With opioid deaths in Maryland continuing to mount, it is critical that prescribers have easy access to patient information. With iPrescribe, we are arming them with a powerful mobile tool that, for the first time, gives them a comprehensive view of their patient’s medication history, including PDMP data from CRISP, in their e-prescribing workflow,” said G. Cameron Deemer, president of DrFirst.

    In addition to e-prescribing and PDMP access, the iPrescribe app delivers powerful medication management including up to 24 months of a patient’s medication history; actual patient cost for prescribed medications from local pharmacies and discount card access to the uninsured; and securely chat with extended care teams and patients in a HIPAA-compliant manner. Prescriptions automatically update to the patient’s medication history to ensure consistent patient records across any EMR.  Integrations are available with most leading EMR and hospital information systems.

    The iPrescribe app is currently available and can be downloaded from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. For more information, visit https://www.iprescribe.com/.

     

    About MedChi
    MedChi, The Maryland State Medical Society, is a non-profit membership association of Maryland physicians. It is the largest physician organization in Maryland. The mission of MedChi is to serve as Maryland’s foremost advocate and resource for physicians, their patients and the public health of Maryland. For more information, please visit www.medchi.org

     About DrFirst
    DrFirst, the nation’s leading provider of ePrescribing and medication management solutions, enables stakeholders across the healthcare industry to intelligently utilize comprehensive real-time data and connectivity to increase their patient safety ratings, efficiency and profitability. Today, over 170,000 healthcare professionals and over 60% of Electronic Health Record vendors, depend on DrFirst’s innovative software solutions to improve clinical workflows, expedite secure collaboration across a patient’s care team and drive better health outcomes. The company’s integrated technologies include its award-winning electronic prescribing platform, the most comprehensive medication history available, clinically specialized secure messaging, as well as patient medication adherence monitoring and benefits checking. In addition, DrFirst was the first to offer e-prescribing for controlled substances (EPCS), and is considered the industry standard for providers nationwide. For more information, please visit www.drfirst.com or connect with us @DrFirst.

     

    MedChi Media Contact:
    Gene M. Ransom, CEO
    Office: 410-539-0872 x 3305

    DrFirst Media Contact:
    Jenna Warner
    Amendola Communications
    480-664-8412 x 19
    [email protected]

     

     

     

    Posted 2.28.2018

  • Harrison Memorial Completes Integration Of Acute And Ambulatory EHR

    Migration to MEDITECH Delivers Gains through Single Patient Medical Record

     

    FRANKLIN, Tenn. – February 27, 2018 – Santa Rosa Consulting, Inc. a leading provider of management consulting and information technology services for the healthcare industry, actively assisted Harrison Memorial Hospital in northern Kentucky with a successful on-time and on-budget migration from MEDITECH Magic and E-Clinical Works to a fully integrated, web-based MEDITECH 6.1 platform.

    When Harrison Memorial began their READY Partner selection in 2016, they conducted a thorough evaluation as they had not used the assistance of consultants in the past. The choice became clear, resulting in the selection of Santa Rosa, based upon their desired criteria: reputation, price, experience, and adaptability to their hospital’s environment. “Like a lot of community hospitals, our team wears a lot of hats,” says Martha Sullivan, Harrison Memorial’s Chief Information Officer. With the successful project completed, she shares “We relied on Santa Rosa to keep the project running on time and functioning well. Their library of documentation, and years of experience with an understanding of MEDITECH, was extraordinarily valuable to Harrison.”

    Harrison Memorial’s goals for the migration extended beyond establishing a single, integrated patient record. The project was also defined and executed to enhance continuity of care, update the community MPI, improve clinical workflows, strengthen Progress Notes completion compliance, and rigorously safeguard, if not improve, the hospital’s revenue cycle performance. This latter goal of protecting A/R and other fiscal results is a key aspect of Santa Rosa’s partnership approach with their clients as illustrated in the recent “MEDITECH 6.1 Implementation with Web Ambulatory” case study, featuring Harrison Memorial.

    Santa Rosa’s Transition Management Program helps protect financial and other mission-critical results during the activity interconnected with a MEDITECH implementation and plays a significant role in the firm’s 100% success rate in MEDITECH projects.

    “No one does MEDITECH implementations better than Santa Rosa as evidenced by our unblemished track record of over 70 successful projects,” says Mark Scruggs, Santa RosaExecutive Vice President. “We bring unique focus, expertise, and tools to deliver unparalleled results to the market. Our focus on quality assurance, advanced e-learning capabilities, and now automated MEDITECH testing demonstrates to the industry that we are committed to developing new solutions that provide advanced value and enhance our rich portfolio of MEDITECH centric services.”

    Santa Rosa and several of their clients will discuss valuable lessons learned and best practices in MEDITECH implementation success on Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 11:00 a.m.Central. Register here to attend this upcoming webinar.

     

    ABOUT SANTA ROSA CONSULTING:
    Santa Rosa Consulting provides management advisory services and technical consulting expertise across the full range of IT vendor products and systems, and empowering better healthcare by designing, creating, staffing and sustaining IT solutions that help make healing happen. Founded in 2008, Santa Rosa Consulting is managed by industry veterans with an average of 20 years of healthcare information technology experience. Santa Rosa is recognized for delivering world-class services and solutions and has received Modern Healthcare’s Best Places to Work in Healthcare award six years in a row. For more information, visit santarosaconsulting.com or call (866) 944-4772.

     

    Media Contact
    Kristin Deuber
    Golden Spiral Marketing
    6149754186
    [email protected]

    Posted 2.27.2018

  • Novarad Introduces Guaranteed Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for Ncompass Enterprise Imaging Implementations

    Predictable and consistent TCO reduces financial risk for healthcare facilities and IT departments

     

    SALT LAKE CITY – February 27, 2018 – Novarad Corporation, a leader in the development of medical imaging software, introduced its guaranteed TCO pricing model for its Ncompass Enterprise Imaging® system. One of the high-risk challenges of budget planning in a healthcare environment is unpredicted or undisclosed maintenance and support costs. Novarad has offered fully inclusive pricing plans on clinical solution products such as PACS, Cardiology and Mammography for many years.  By extending this to Enterprise Imaging, healthcare facilities can perform an upgrade with full confidence of predictable costs.

    “We received many competitor quotes, but when you looked at five years of ownership and ten years of ownership, there was a big cost difference,” said Kelly Denton, Imaging Director at Southwest Medical Center (SWMC). “The Board was appreciative that we did a very thorough analysis and were so confident on why we wanted to choose Novarad.”

    Novarad’s controlled pricing model includes 24/7 US-based support, software upgrades for the life of the agreement and if included in the deployment, ongoing hardware updates. Additionally, healthcare providers benefit by paying only for the services and storage they use—all costs that would fall under TCO.

    TCO is a well-known and vital piece to the healthcare operations puzzle. According to Gartner*, “An upfront focus on TCO can help reduce the long-term cost of maintaining and supporting applications. TCO should be a primary consideration during the procurement phase of all major applications and systems, not five years later.”

    “TCO is an important component (risk management) of vendor management and a byproduct of application investment,” wrote Barry Runyon, Research Vice President at Gartner. “When an investment in a vendor product or service is approved, the enterprise is automatically committing to ongoing costs that could eventually be more than 10 times the initial investment. It is incumbent upon all stakeholders, including IT, finance and functional areas of the investment, to manage this significant financial commitment and risk going forward.”*

    CIOs that take an active role in monitoring and managing lifetime software costs tend to gain the best return on investment (ROI) and the greatest business outcomes.

    Those interested in learning more about taking advantage of the controlled TCO model may visit the company at HIMSS 2018, booth 8015, visit www.novarad.net.

    *Gartner, “Develop These Two Healthcare Provider Strategic IT Disciplines,” Barry Runyon, 14 December 2017.

     

    # # #

    For over 20 years, Novarad has enabled healthcare providers to solve their imaging problems through its full diagnostic suite. Today, Novarad’s specialized enterprise imaging and workflow solutions continue to improve upon industry standards and empower healthcare providers everywhere to solve problems. Through customizable workflow and imaging solutions, Novarad encompasses medical imaging needs. Visit Novarad at www.novarad.net for more information.

    Media Contact:
    Kristi Alvarado
    Media Relations Contact at Novarad
    801.642.1001
    [email protected]

     

    Posted 2.27.2018

  • Immersive Expands Third-Party Risk Management Solutions with the Introduction of retina3P Framework and Cloud-Based Platform

    retina3P™ framework addresses entire third-party relationship and risk management lifecycle. retina3P platform automates risk profiling, risk identification, mitigation management, communications and compliance functions in a collaborative, community-driven ecosystem.

     

    PANAMA CITY, Fla., – February 27, 2018 – Immersive, a leader in healthcare data management advisory services and solutions, today introduced retina3P, a comprehensive solutions portfolio comprising a tactical framework, cloud-based platform and expert services purpose-built for healthcare and life sciences third-party risk management. retina3P builds upon Immersive’s prior work in business associate risk management in response to client recognition that their sensitive data footprint, and therefore their third-party risk footprint, is larger than their business associate relationships alone.

    “While ePHI security and privacy concerns are often the starting points for our clients’ efforts in third-party risk management, they are quick to appreciate that their sensitive information sharing practices extend well beyond their business associate relationships. Because the retina3P framework addresses nine distinct domains of risk, not just IT risk, we are able to quickly identify the domains and third-party business practices that matter most to our clients, determine if and how these risks are related, and then prioritize sensible, scalable, and measurable risk management processes to all sensitive relationships,” stated Immersive co-founder and principal, Stephanie Crabb. “Our data-driven, business-sensitive approaches continue to distinguish Immersive from its industry peers that orient their solutions to security and privacy regulatory compliance adherence exclusively.”

    The retina3P framework:

    • addresses the entire third-party relationship and risk management lifecycle, from due diligence to termination
    • provides a schema and toolkit for establishing third-party risk management strategy, identifying and prioritizing third-party relationships of interest, monitoring and measuring program effectiveness, and maturing program scope

    The retina3P platform:

    • establishes and documents standardized third-party business profiles maintained by both Immersive’s analyst team and via voluntary self-management by third parties themselves
    • operationalizes continuous risk identification and management via automated communications, customized inspection and audit, and Immersive analyst-driven activities
    • creates a community-driven ecosystem where clients collaborate to create standards and prioritize inspection and audit activities, where third parties contribute voluntarily, and where shared communications are enabled

    The retina3P services portfolio offers:

    • current state risk management program assessments, gap analysis and roadmap development
    • structured, project-oriented services to address program development broadly
    • discreet framework component implementation
    • turnkey, fully outsourced, managed third-party risk management services in single-year or multi-year programs
    • customized, co-sourced third-party risk management services

    “As an organization building a program from scratch, Immersive’s retina3P framework has provided the structure for us to organize the work, create the plan, communicate the plan to our critical business unit shareholders and move forward methodically,” stated Scot Eibel, JD, chief compliance officer for U.S. Renal Care, the nation’s third largest provider of renal care services. “By defining the data and information that mattered to us most from the beginning, not just ePHI, we were able to approach our 10,000+ third-party inventory in one evolution, culling it down to a high-confidence, prioritized business associate and sensitive third-party inventory. Immersive is now executing a continuous monitoring plan aligned with our enterprise risk management requirements. In less than six months, we have already identified and mitigated risk that we had no visibility of prior to starting down this path.”

    About Immersive
    Immersive is a provider of exceptional healthcare data solutions harmonized under four service pillars: data governance, data management, data analytics and data protection. We pride ourselves on a common-sense, resource-sensitive approach, with a healthy dose of ingenuity to achieve better outcomes for our clients. Our consultants have served on the front lines as well as in the executive suite; we have walked the hallways of healthcare in your shoes for decades. Client vision sets the compass for our work. Immersive was founded on the belief that our industry can and will achieve extraordinary advances in clinical care, healthcare operations and healthcare financing when we apply the full potential of the data that we have at our fingertips. We are profoundly respectful of the power and the value of today’s healthcare data and we are relentless about protecting it. For more information, please visit www.immersivellc.com.

    Media Contact:
    Jess Clifton
    Account Executive
    Agency Ten22 for Immersive
    678-360-9043
    [email protected]

    Posted 2.27.2018

  • FORTIFIED HEALTH SECURITY EARNS PRESTIGIOUS 2018 FROST & SULLIVAN HEALTHCARE IoT CYBERSECURITY COMPANY OF THE YEAR AWARD

    This elite recognition validates Fortified’s philosophy that a managed security services model is critical to effective IoT security programs

    FRANKLIN, TN – February 26, 2018 – Frost & Sullivan, a leading growth partnership firm, completed a review and in-depth analysis of the healthcare cybersecurity market that led it to honor Fortified Health Security as the 2018 North American Healthcare Internet of Things (IoT) Cybersecurity Company of the Year. This award highlights Fortified’s strong overall performance and its impressive portfolio of healthcare-specific cybersecurity managed services offerings.

    In the award, Frost & Sullivan highlighted Fortified’s ability to partner with healthcare organizations and address cybersecurity risks from multiple perspectives, effectively increasing its clients’ overall security posture over time. Given the market, threat landscape, and the extreme resource shortage, a flexible healthcare-specific managed security services approach resonates with healthcare organizations. Fortified’s unique services approach helps healthcare organizations address their healthcare cybersecurity needs in an efficient manner. Frost & Sullivan also recognized Fortified’s innovative managed services approach to addressing the security needs of connected medical and IoT devices.

    “Fortified has strengthened its position as the preferred cybersecurity services provider in healthcare with its unique managed services approach, which comprehensively addresses the challenges of securing connected medical devices,” said Vikrant Gandhi, Industry Director, Frost & Sullivan. “By taking a true partnership approach, Fortified effectively addresses the top security initiatives of healthcare organizations.”

    In its report, Frost & Sullivan highlights several key success factors that contribute to Fortified’s impressive portfolio of cybersecurity offerings:

    • A comprehensive cybersecurity services portfolio, along with Fortified’s extensive industry expertise, continues to help the company strengthen healthcare organizations’ security programs by assessing risks, implementing safeguards to protect sensitive information, and assisting on compliance with state and federal regulations.
    • Fortified enables healthcare organizations to manage cybersecurity risks from a strategic, operational, and tactical perspective—a key reason the company continues to generate high levels of customer satisfaction.
    • Innovative offerings, such as Fortified’s Connected Medical Device and IoT Security program, coupled with services like Risk Analysis and Vulnerability Management, and Business Associate Lifecycle Management deliver effective end-to-end security.
    • The company’s strong focus on continuous process improvement has enabled Fortified to drive out errors, optimize operations, and deliver a higher level of service than competitors.

    “We are honored to be named the 2018 North American Healthcare IoT Cybersecurity Company of Year by such an esteemed organization as Frost & Sullivan,” said Dan L. Dodson, President of Fortified Health Security. “We’ve earned this exceptional independent award because of our team’s relentless drive to increase the security posture of healthcare and to bring value to our clients every day.”

    Read the full award report from Frost & Sullivan here.

    ABOUT FORTIFIED HEALTH SECURITY:

    Fortified Health Security is a leader in cybersecurity, compliance, and managed services, focusing exclusively on helping healthcare organizations overcome operational and regulatory challenges. Founded in 2009, Fortified has established a heritage of excellence, compliance, and innovation. Today, Fortified Health Security partners with healthcare organizations across the continuum, serving health systems, single hospital entities, physician practices, post acute providers, payers, and business associates. For more information, visit FortifiedHealthSecurity.com or call (615) 600-4002.

    ABOUT FROST & SULLIVAN:

    Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation, and leadership. The Company’s Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO’s Growth Team with disciplined research and best practice models to drive the generation, evolution, and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages more than 50 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses, and the investment community from 45 offices on six continents.

    Posted 2.26.2018

  • AWS Cloud Experts from Orion Health to Speak at HIMSS18

    LAS VEGAS – February 21, 2018 – Orion Health™, a leading provider of interoperability, population health management and precision medicine solutions, today announced it has been invited to present during HIMSS18, the health information technology industry’s largest annual conference. The first presentation will be given during the Cloud Computing Forum sponsored by AWS. The second presentation will take place in the AWS booth 1625 on the HIMSS18 exhibit floor at the Sands Expo Center.

    Presentation #1: “Planning Your Cloud Journey”
    In his presentation, “Planning Your Cloud Journey,” Steven Crusenberry, senior vice president, SaaS products & cloud operations, Orion Health, will guide healthcare IT leaders on their journey to the cloud, discussing the lessons he’s learned from a career of supporting health systems through successful cloud adoption. It will be held on March 15, at 9:45 a.m. local time, in the Mouton 2 ballroom of Wynn Las Vegas.

    The goal of the presentation is to provide a practical guide for attendees as they plan their own journey to the cloud, including a step-by-step process:

    • Evaluate your success criteria: What do you want to accomplish related to cost savings, technology agility, and enhanced organization capabilities?
    • Understand your capability: Do you have the necessary experience on staff? What’s the status of your existing technology contracts? What’s already virtualized? What resources can you devote to the journey?
    • Identify timing and approach: When should you start new initiatives in the cloud? How do you get executive buy-in for the duration of the project? Do you start with a one-cloud or multi-cloud approach?

    “Throughout my career, I have worked with some of the top payers and health systems in the nation, convincing them of the benefits offered by cloud infrastructure. As the healthcare space moves into an all-digital future, security and storage make the cloud more practical than ever,” Crusenberry said. “It’s an honor for me to speak on the topic at the HIMSS Cloud Computing Forum where I’ll have a chance to share what I’ve learned so that the future experience attendees have with the cloud builds upon the work of others, ensuring the smoothest transition possible.”

    Orion Health leverages the AWS Cloud to provide security and privacy for its data and powers Orion Health’s machine learning offerings, all of which are essential for the management and analysis of valuable healthcare records and data.

    Presentation #2: “A Modern Cloud Engine in a Traditional On-Prem Healthcare World”
    In addition to the HIMSS Cloud Computing Forum presentation, Damian Leopard, solution consultant, Orion Health, will conduct a presentation titled “A Modern Cloud Engine in a Traditional On-Prem Healthcare World.” The in-theater presentation, to be held at the AWS booth 1625, on March 7, 2018 from 1:30-1:50 p.m., will outline how Orion Health’s Rhapsodyâ Integration Engine, now in use at more than 640 healthcare organizations in 36 countries worldwide, brings disparate systems together through seamless data integration made possible by the highly secure and scalable AWS Cloud.

    In his presentation, Leopard will:

    • Debunk the erroneous—yet persistent—belief that on-premise solutions are more secure than cloud-based solutions.
    • Describe how the healthcare industry’s comfort with cloud-based solutions has increased to the point where organizations are not only entrusting core applications, like their EMR system, to the cloud, but also tangential applications, like their integration engine.
    • Detail how organizations can use a cloud-based integration engine’s unprecedented level of scalability to meet elastic performance requirements.

    “The AWS Cloud is enabling Orion Health to become the custodian of patient health records globally, advancing our goals in the areas of precision medicine, data analytics and integration,” said Leopard. “A single patient’s medical records could eventually contain as much as six terabytes of data. The AWS Cloud gives us the bandwidth and power necessary to store and make use of patient data, now and into the future.”

     

    About Orion Health
    Orion Health is a global healthcare technology company delivering interoperability, population health and precision medicine solutions. Thousands of clinicians use Orion Health software to deliver care for more than 100 million patients in more than 25 countries. The company employs over 1,200 people globally and is committed to continual innovation. For more information, visit orionhealth.com.

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    Media Contact
    Marcia Rhodes
    Amendola Communications
    [email protected]
    480-664-8412 x 15

    Posted 2.21.2018

  • Dolbey is Once Again Recognized by KLAS Research for Speech Recognition and Computer-Assisted Coding

    Cincinnati, OH – February 7, 2018 – KLAS Research is a healthcare information technology data and insights company providing the industry with accurate, honest and impartial research on the software and services used by providers and payers worldwide.  Every year, KLAS collects evaluations from healthcare providers to rank vendors across several categories.  This year, Dolbey is honored to announce that KLAS has ranked its software as #1 KLAS Category Leader for Front End Speech Recognition for Imaging and #1 KLAS Category Leader for Computer-Assisted Coding.

    “We recognize that the awards come from KLAS, but are based on the surveys of our customers,” states Robert Leslie, Vice President and General Manager at Dolbey.  “For that, we are very grateful to our customers for the recognition.”

    Dolbey delivers solutions to healthcare that support the entire cycle of a patient’s chart.  Its solutions specialize in physician-facing applications for speech recognition and dictation as well as solutions for document creation and transcription, clinical documentation improvement (CDI) and computer-assisted coding (CAC).

    Heather Eminger, Product Manager at Dolbey, states “The road ahead is exciting! We are moving into the age of smarter software through machine learning and artificial intelligence.  With our advancements with this technology, our speech recognition and coding solutions have become more interactive and intuitive, allowing for greater accuracy and improved efficiency.”

    About Dolbey
    Dolbey’s award-winning healthcare suite of solutions improve productivity while delivering better documentation which improves patient care. Since 1914, Dolbey has consistently evolved its products incorporating the latest technologies available to meet the demands of the healthcare community. Today, our suite of products includes Speech Recognition (premise or cloud-based), CAPD, CDI, CAC, Transcription and Dictation.

    About KLAS
    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’s voice and acts as a catalyst for improving vendor performance. Follow KLAS on Twitter at www.twitter.com/KLASresearch.

    For further information, please contact:
    Traci Miller, Marketing Executive
    800-878-7828 x119
    [email protected]
    www.dolbey.com

     

    Posted 2.21.2018

  • Dolbey Launching “Cloud-Powered” Clinical Documentation Solution – Fusion Narrate™ powered by nVoq™

    Cincinnati, Ohio – February 21, 2018 – Dolbey and Company, Inc. (Dolbey) Best in KLAS for Speech Recognition 2012-2016 and Category Leader – Front-end Speech Recognition for Imaging 2018 announces its new cloud-based speech recognition product – Fusion Narrate. Providers can dictate directly into any application, without the need for integration, and immediately benefit from many of Dolbey’s robust platform features, including the Fusion Narrate CAPD™ module, which ensures patient records are accurate and complete while improving patient care.

    Dolbey has partnered with nVoq Incorporated (nVoq), a Boulder, CO provider of speech recognition and workflow automation solutions, to deliver Fusion Narrate.  In the cloud for Healthcare since 2011, the proven nVoq SayIt™ speech recognition platform is based on leading-edge neural network and machine learning technology, offering superior accuracy, scale, and reliability.

    “We are excited about our collaboration with nVoq. They have brought speech recognition to another level, making it a very attractive addition to our products in the healthcare industry,” states Jerry Dolbey, Owner and President of Dolbey. “With nVoq’s exceptional speech recognition accuracy along with a cost-effective, reliable, and user-friendly platform, Physicians and other healthcare providers find that Fusion Narrate offers a seamless and powerful tool for navigating and improving healthcare records.”

    “Dolbey Fusion Narrate is a game-changer for the hospital and health system market,” said Charles Corfield, Chief Executive Officer of nVoq.  “There’s now an extremely credible alternative for organizations who want the convenience of front-end speech recognition combined with innovative, highly functional clinical workflow support.”

    These are some of the many benefits Fusion Narrate offers:

    • Fast, accurate, lightweight cloud-convenience
    • Clinicians can use it anywhere and seamlessly with any application
    • No onsite server expense or maintenance
    • Virtual desktop support
    • One-click client installation
    • Automatic updates – no downtime for upgrades
    • Integrates with the Fusion Narrate Text™ platform for full transcription work flows
    • 24/7/365 Support, 100% North American based
    • Supports a variety of microphones including a wireless microphone app on a mobile device
    • Simple yet powerful voice commands including unparalleled Vision Clicks™

    To see Fusion Narrate in action, please visit booth #6024 at the HIMSS 18 Conference and Exhibition March 5 – 9, 2018.

    About Dolbey
    Dolbey and Company’s and Dolbey Systems’ award winning healthcare solutions deliver superior documentation, boosting productivity and improving patient care. Since 1914, Dolbey has advanced the latest technologies to meet the evolving demands of the healthcare community, including Speech Recognition, CAPD, CDI, CAC, Transcription and Dictation.

    About nVoq
    Headquartered in Boulder, CO since 2000, nVoq prides itself on making workflow more efficient for knowledge workers.  Our HIPAA and PCI-DSS-compliant solutions platform leverages “best in breed” technology components to optimize accuracy, availability and scale.  We provide both the cloud-based SayIt speech recognition solution as well as the Agent Assist desktop automations toolkit for contact centers.

     

    For more information:

    Dolbey
    Brigid Dreyer
    Marketing Manager
    800.756.7828 x145
    [email protected]
    www.dolbey.com

    nVoq
    Kristen Ayers
    Director of Marketing
    303.304.7021
    [email protected]
    www.sayIT.nvoq.com

    Posted 2.21.2018

  • Healthcare Organizations Document Major Improvements in Quality, Cost and Efficiency Using Data, Analytics and Professional Services

    Dozens of Health Catalyst clients document 125 performance improvements including lower mortality, higher revenue, better patient experiences

    SALT LAKE CITY, UT – February 20, 2018 – A well-defined benchmark in healthcare quality improvement is the Triple Aim—to improve the patient experience and health of populations while also reducing the cost of healthcare. Achieving the three-part goal, however, has been difficult for most healthcare organizations.

    A bright spot in this environment can be found in organizations that have adopted a systematic approach to the use of data and analytics to guide their improvement initiatives. In 2017, nearly three dozen organizations ranging in size from small community hospitals to some of the nation’s largest integrated delivery systems documented 125 improvements in quality, cost and efficiency using technology and improvement processes from Health Catalyst.

    The 2017 improvements, substantiated in 48 case studies (out of a total of 140 Health Catalyst case studies), represent a 69% year-over-year increase in documented improvement outcomes. Of the 125 outcomes:

    • 42% included improvement in clinical outcomes such as reduced mortality, complication rates, readmissions, infections, and length of stay.
    • 18% included improvement in financial outcomes such as decreased variable cost, decreased total cost, increased revenue, and improved margin, as well as decreased denials, write-offs, and accounts receivable (A/R) days.
    • 35% included operational improvements such as improved workflow, reduction of unwarranted variation, improved patient access and decreased wait times for service.

    The vast majority of the improvements documented by Health Catalyst’s clients were achieved in highly complex organizations with multiple hospitals and outpatient facilities, including several accountable care organizations (ACOs) responsible for the care of millions of patients. Thirty-one percent of the improvement projects involved workflow changes across multiple care locations, many of them affecting the entire care continuum for a patient population. Affected sites of care included the inpatient setting (38% of the total); the Emergency Department (31%); outpatient settings such as clinics (22%), peri-operative (20%); and the performance of risk-based payer-provider arrangements such as ACOs (10%).

    “American healthcare is moving in a very positive direction with some real momentum, and the impressive improvements achieved by Health Catalyst’s clients indicate they are well positioned to ride that rising wave,” said Brent James, MD, a strategic advisor to Health Catalyst who is the former chief quality officer of Intermountain Healthcare and a global leader in bringing quality improvement science and methods to clinical care.  “Improvements involving changes in practice across the continuum are extremely difficult to accomplish, so the scale of these improvements is incredibly impressive.  Many health systems are still trying to focus on improvement in just one hospital.”

    In addition to improvements in clinical, financial and operational outcomes, 42% of the documented total included improvements in analytics efficiency such as shortened time-to-value, time savings in producing and accessing information, and increased adoption of analytics by the organization.

    The technology foundation for Health Catalyst’s success is the Health Catalyst Data Operating System (DOS™), a data-first, analytics and application platform that transforms raw data from virtually any data source into Deep Data— data that is meaningful, and actionable leading to actual business value at a lower cost. DOS accomplishes this by integrating and analyzing critical data from over 200 of the most widely-used data sources, and delivering real-time decision support within the existing workflows of clinicians, administrators and other healthcare professionals.

     About Health Catalyst
    Health Catalyst is a next-generation data, analytics, and decision-support company committed to being a catalyst for massive, sustained improvements in healthcare outcomes. We are the leaders in a new era of advanced predictive analytics for population health and value-based care with a suite of machine learning-driven solutions, decades of outcomes-improvement expertise, and an unparalleled ability to integrate data from across the healthcare ecosystem. Our proven data warehousing and analytics platform helps improve quality, add efficiency and lower costs in support of more than 85 million patients for organizations ranging from the largest US health system to forward-thinking physician practices. Health Catalyst’s technology and professional services help to keep patients engaged and healthy in their homes and workplaces, and to optimize their care when it becomes necessary. We are grateful to be recognized by Fortune, Gallup, Glassdoor, Modern Healthcare and a host of others as a Best Place to Work in technology and healthcare. Visit www.healthcatalyst.com, and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. 

     

    Media Contact:
    Todd Stein
    Amendola Communications
    510-417-0612
    [email protected]

     

     

     

    Posted 2.20.2018

  • Largest Infor Healthcare Partner Avaap Recaps Banner Year

    Company’s Unique Leadership Position in Healthcare Further Supported by Strategic Relationships, Go-Live Success, and EHR-ERP Integration Capabilities

     

    EDISON, NJ – February 14, 2018 – Avaap, the fastest growing industry leader for electronic health record (EHR) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations, and Infor, a leading provider of business applications specialized by industry and built for the cloud, today announced positive results from its strategic healthcare partnership. Avaap, the largest dedicated Infor healthcare partner, brought the first healthcare customer live on Infor CloudSuite™ Financials and Supply Chain and expanded its capabilities to provide healthcare customers with a single source solution that enhances the investment in ERP and EHR software.

    “Avaap invested early in training and development to build Infor CloudSuite capabilities and help customers like Palos Health efficiently implement Infor’s next generation financials software for faster return on technology investments,” said Dhiraj Shah, CEO, Avaap. “Additionally, with Infor having the largest software footprint in healthcare and the shift from volume- to value-based reimbursement, Avaap made strategic investments to expand capabilities and help customers enhance their largest technology investments while eliminating silos between their clinical and business systems.”

    Avaap is a leading Infor healthcare partner with a dedicated EHR practice for revenue cycle management and EHR optimization designed to increase physician satisfaction and efficiency and improve patient care while reducing cost. As healthcare organizations seek to eliminate information silos and bridge the divide between expenses and revenue capture, Avaap’s EHR-ERP implementation capabilities can address connectivity needs, enable more efficient use of technology, and support strategies that yield better patient outcomes and accountability for operational processes.

    “Avaap is a strong, strategic healthcare partner who have made significant investments in EHR-ERP integration capabilities which resulted in a high number of customers brought live on Infor software.  Additionally, Avaap has successive wins as Partner of the Year and we have seen a number of healthcare organizations actively selecting Avaap as their systems integrator due to their industry expertise, deep cloud knowledge and rich history with Infor products,” said Neil Wilson, vice president, Global Alliances, Infor. “While the last few years have seen healthcare customers focus on Electronic Health Records implementations, I anticipate the next few years will see a re-focus on ERP modernization, including upgrades and new feature deployment as well as customers with older solutions making a change. Partners such as Avaap with expertise in EHR and ERP systems are key to our strategy and deliver competitive strength through its decade of industry-specific experience, global team of resources, and implementation of best practices that address connectivity challenges between the systems which all help our customers address changing market demands.”

    Posted 2.20.2018
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