I must admit that it’s getting harder and harder to keep up with all of the Healthcare IT Accelerators, Healthcare IT Incubators, Healthcare IT that are going up all over the place. The interest in investment and incubation of healthcare IT companies is huge right now. It’s an exciting time for those of us in the Healthcare IT space and an even more exciting time to be a healthcare entrepreneur.

Two recent announcements that caught my eye were the following.

NYeC Launches the New York Digital Health Accelerator (NYDHA) – You can read the full release, but it’s a $4.2 Million program to accelerate the creation of digital health technology companies in New York City. It’s an interesting collaboration of the New York City Investment Fund (NYCIF) joined the New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) and the NYS Department of Health (DOH).

I think the thing that sets apart the NYDHA (that’s a long name even abbreviated) is the $300,000 each company gets along with the 18 healthcare providers that have agreed to participate in the program. We’ll see how well NYDHA can execute on this relationship since I believe it’s key. A healthcare IT accelerator program could provide nothing more valuable than actual customers for these healthcare IT products.

I also just saw that on May 10th the New York Digital Health Accelerator program is putting on an information and networking event. It says they’ll be streaming the event live. Looks like a great group of speakers and shows the depth of their connections.

Healthbox Launches Boston Healthcare Startup Accelerator – Healthbox launched its first program in Chicago. I think it’s a smart move for them to go to Boston (or Cambridge if you prefer) since it is a hotbed for healthcare IT. They’re offering $50,000 in seed capital for the 3 month program that will go from August to November.

ONC and CMS sent out the following email about the meaningful use stage 2 comment period. It closes very soon and so I encourage everyone to submit their comments on meaningful use stage 2. I’m a real proponent of the benefits of crowd sourcing and if enough people comment on meaningful use stage 2, I think we’ll receive the benefits of the crowd participating in the discussion and improving MU stage 2. I encourage doctors in particular to share their comments on the meaningful use stage 2 NPRM.

Please note that the comment period closes on Monday, May 7 for the notices of proposed rule-making (NPRMs) for Stage 2 of meaningful use and updated certification criteria.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) rule proposes the capabilities and related standards and implementation specifications that Certified EHR Technology will need to include to, at a minimum, support the achievement of “meaningful use” by eligible health care professionals beginning with the EHR reporting periods in FY/CY 2014. The rule also proposes revisions to the permanent certification program for health information technology, which include changing the name of the program to the “ONC HIT Certification Program.”

ONC’s rule complements the newly released Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed rule for Stage 2 of the EHR Incentive Programs, clarifying the specifications necessary to meet the criteria for these programs.

Comments Can Be Submitted in 4 Ways

Both ONC and CMS rules identify that comments can be officially submitted in 4 ways:

1. Electronically through www.regulations.gov – this is the preferred method
2. Regular mail
3. Express mail or overnight mail
4. Hand-delivered/courier

Faxes are not accepted.

To enhance the public comment experience, ONC and CMS have made a copy of the rule available in Microsoft Word to make it easier those who comment to access and copy portions of their proposed rule for use in their individual comments.  Visit http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/meaningful-use-stage-2 for more information.

There’s a real change happening right now in the venture capital healthcare investment world. In a recent article on NPR they highlight one piece of the change that’s happening with VC investment in healthcare:

The share of venture dollars flowing to seed and early-stage investments in biotechnology and medical devices has plummeted since 2007, when investors pumped $3.6 billion into 332 deals in which a price was disclosed, according to data compiled for Kaiser Health News by FactSet Research Systems. Overall venture investing declined by nearly one-third as the economic recession set in.

Many might look at this and say that this is a bad thing for healthcare. I think this this is a good thing for healthcare. One reason why is described in the same article:

“If you come in with [a device] that’s 10 percent better and twice as expensive, it’s hard to get anyone to care,” said Bryan Roberts, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capitalist at Venrock, a Silicon Valley company that invests in firms working on health services, medical devices and drugs.

I think it’s healthy that we’re no longer investing twice as much money in something that delivers only partially better care. Sure, we still need companies innovating and looking at how that 10 percent better care can have an extra 0 on the end and be 100% better care.

Plus, I think we’re seeing a shift in healthcare investment into a large number of smaller companies who can innovate as opposed to larger sums of money into medical device and biotech companies. In some ways we’re seeing the costs associated with a startup company in healthcare starting to come down the way they did in the IT side of things.

The Doctor’s Company, a medical malpractice insurance firm, surveyed 5,105 doctors nationwide about EHR adoption. According to the report, here’s the top 5 states leading EHR adoption:
* 41% EMR Adoption by Oregon’s Physicians
* 39% EMR Adoption by Georgia’s Physicians
* 37% EMR Adoption by Florida’s Physicians
* 35% EMR Adoption by Washington’s Physicians
* 34% EMR Adoption by Virgina’s Physicians

Another interesting stat from the study said that 17% of doctors surveyed said they had no plans to use an EHR in their practice.

I’m sure we could talk about ~5,000 doctors not being a representative sample for 50 states, but the numbers are interesting. I think it’s also worth noting that the highest EHR adoption they found for a state was 41%. So much for all those people who say that EHR adoption has topped 50%. I still put it at the 25-30% range for overall EHR adoption.

I think it would be interesting to do a little digging and see how good the HIE efforts are in each of these states that have higher EHR adoption. While EHR isn’t an absolute pre-requisite for an HIE, it is in my book.

The 17% of doctors not wanting to adopt an EHR isn’t that surprising. In fact, I could have imagined it higher. Although, that’s going to change over the next 5 years. Sure, there will always be that 5% that won’t change, but most of the rest won’t have much choice.

The HIT Community recently did a webinar on EHR budgeting that I found quite interesting. Looking at the slides (embedded below), you can see that it covers a number of the important factors related to budgeting for an EHR. They talk about various cost savings and expenses you’ll have. I love that this goes beyond the EHR incentive money.

I’ve covered a lot of these various items before and I have them listed on my EHR & EMR benefits page. I also go into detail on most of them in my EHR selection e-book.

Now for their presentation slides:

You can find a link to the Live recording of the webinar on the HIT Community website.

I know that I spend far too much time talking, writing, tweeting, posting, commenting, obsessing over everything EMR and Healthcare IT related, but doing so has had some interesting consequences when it comes to certain words or abbreviations. Let me give you some examples of Healthcare IT words or abbreviations that have been tainted one way or another.

Meaningful – I honestly can’t even use this word any more. Meaningful Use has ruined the word meaningful for me. I definitely can’t use the word meaningful in healthcare anymore without cringing. It’s like a permanent built in pun for meaningful now. Plus, meaningful just isn’t meaningful anymore because it’s been used so much. Meaningful will be forever tainted in my vocabulary.

PHR – I expect we’re going to see the general death of the word PHR. Too many failed EHR softwares have ruined this word. I’m sure we’ll still have many of the functions and features that PHR software offers and many PHR software will be around, but we’re going to see a new branding of what they do. Yesterday I heard one called Patient Relationship Management (PRM I guess) which could be a good replacement for the tainted PHR term.

mHealth – This word is a bit like PHR in that we’re still going to see plenty of mobile health, but I think the term mHealth is going to go away. Eventually mobile will just be an extension of healthcare IT and healthcare in general. We’ll still see some residual naming, but most won’t differentiate.

I’m sure there are a lot more. What other healthcare words or abbreviations have lost life for you?

After the fall of Google Health, many had written off PHR (Personal Health Record) software as dead and gone. I can’t say that I had much hope for PHR software myself. Although, some of the recent moves by PHR vendor NoMoreClipboard have me pausing to reconsider what value a PHR could provide. My gut tells me they might want to distance themselves from the toxic term, PHR, but they’re definitely being creative with the platform they created.

Right before HIMSS I covered how the PHR could help to facilitate an ACO and Patient Centered Medical Home. Both ACO and PCMH are much more popular terms these days and quite frankly many are still trying to figure out how to make them a reality. I could see a PHR helping to make this happen.

Just yesterday, NoMoreClipboard announced a partnership with Healthx which makes PHR software available to Payers and Employers. I know that many in the investment world are arguing against trying to get money from payers and employers for wellness programs as a startup company. Although, NoMoreClipboard is not a startup company and I have little doubt that integrating their PHR with the Healthx portal was not easily accomplished. I’ll be interested to hear how many of the 12 million people who use Healthx end up using the PHR as well.

Add in the meaningful use stage 2 requirements that PHR can fulfill and maybe just maybe the PHR are back in style. Although, they’re not the PHR that most thought it would be. Instead, it’s taking on new forms that give it an interesting new life.

As most of you know by now I’m a sucker for infographics and EHR. So, when you combine them in an EHR infographic I can’t resist. This EHR infographic comes from the people at Care360. The other cool part related to this healthcare infographic is that Care360 now has a blog. This EHR infographic’s purpose is to compare traditional record keeping to electronic healthcare records (EHR) and the benefits of using EHR.

Click twice on the infographic to see the full size infographic.

The news was just reported that MediConnect is selling to Verisk Analytics (VRSK) for $348 million.

MediConnect Global Inc., a home-grown Utah company that provides medical records-retrieval, scanning and storage services, is about to be sold to New Jersey-based Verisk Analytics Inc. for $348.6 million.

The deal is expected to close by the end of the month.

I think we’re going to continue to see a number of companies that weren’t previously in the healthcare space entering the healthcare space through acquisition. Seems like MediConnect is a well connected company in the healthcare space. Here’s more details on MediConnect:

MediConnect has a repository of nearly 10 million medical records that are digitized, indexed and securely hosted online. It counts among its clients four of the five leading health insurers in the country.

I’ve seen a huge influx of scanning companies going after healthcare business as doctors continue to move to EHR software. Scanning the past charts is a popular option once you move to an EHR. I find it interesting that MediConnect scans and stores the charts in the cloud. I’m surprised I haven’t seen more companies doing this same service. Many scan, but then provide the records locally to the clinic instead of storing them in the cloud.

The US news world is covering this week’s supreme court hearings on the constitutionality of the healthcare reform law, also known as the Accountable Care Act (ACA). No doubt the ruling of the supreme court could have a really major impact on healthcare reform in this country. As best I can tell, all things seem to be pointing at the law remaining in place, but when you’re dealing with a few people deciding something this important things can change quickly.

I’ll admit to not being an expert on the details of ACA and healthcare reform. Plus, each side is spitting out so much rhetoric that it’s hard to really get a hold of the real details of what is going to happen with this new law and what the long term impacts from it will be. Seems like rational thought and reason is going out the door as emotions and partisan lines take over.

I did see this healthcare reform infographic from AHIP hitting my Twitter stream a few times. It analyzes an important nuance of ACA and healthcare reform. If you cut out the mandate for health insurance and leave in the other ACA market reforms, then as this graphic shows the insurance premiums go up and the uninsured increases as well.

This is basic rules of health insurance really. The ACA market reforms basically add a bunch of unhealthy patients to the insurance companies patient list. That’s why insurance companies were denying them coverage in the past. It seems the hope is that the health insurance mandate would also add a group of healthy patients as well since they could help offset the cost of the expensive patients.

This doesn’t have all that much to do with EMR, but it’s an incredibly important topic in healthcare that could fundamentally change the landscape. So, I thought it worth talking about.

One thing should be made clear. The ACA is different than the ARRA/HITECH legislation. I believe there is a little bit of healthcare IT money in the ACA, but when you talk about EHR incentive money you’re really talking about ARRA/HITECH. Only ACA is going to the supreme court. ARRA/HITECH could be effected by future legislation, but is a separate and distinct bill.