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EHR Certification Revoked for EHRMagic

Yesterday HHS released news that they’d revoked the EHR certification of the EHRMagic-Ambulatory and EHRMagic-Inpatient EHR software. Looks like InoGard originally certified the EHR and they and ONC received information that had them retest the EHR software and it failed the certification re-test.

I think we all want government to hold bad actors accountable. So, it’s good to weed out EHR companies that aren’t doing what they should. However, they better also be careful. Imagine being a doctor of an EHR vendor whose EHR certification gets revoked. Does that mean that they have to give back the EHR incentive money the received? Those doctors trusted in InfoGard’s ability to certify an EHR vendor and InfoGard failed at that job. Should a doctor be punished for InfoGard’s failing? Now apply this to a hospital that uses a certified EHR and loses that EHR certification. That’s a multi-million dollar impact.

I guess EHRMagic better take down the info on their website that says they can get physicians $44,000 in EHR incentive money. Looking at their website, it makes me wonder who chose to use their EHR in the first place. That would be interesting to know.

Here’s the full press release from HHS on the EHR revocation:

Two electronic health records, previously certified as products to be used as part of the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs, have had their certifications revoked. Farzad Mostashari, M.D., the national coordinator for health information technology, announced today that the products do not meet standards and providers cannot use these products to meet the requirements of the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive programs.

EHRMagic-Ambulatory and EHRMagic-Inpatient, both developed by EHRMagic Inc. of Santa Fe Springs, Calif., no longer meet the EHR certification requirements. The EHRs must be certified by a certification body (ACB) authorized by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) before regaining certification.

Both ONC and an ONC ACB, InfoGard Laboratories Inc. (InfoGard), received notifications that the EHRMagic products did not meet the required functionality and the products should not have passed certification. InfoGard analyzed the additional information from the notification and contacted EHRMagic, launching the ONC authorized certification body required surveillance activities. InfoGard concluded that it was necessary for the EHR products to be retested for select requirements. EHRMagic, Inc. participated in retesting and failed.

“We and our certification bodies take complaints and our follow-up seriously. By revoking the certification of these EHR products, we are making sure that certified electronic health record products meet the requirements to protect patients and providers,” said Dr. Mostashari. “Because EHRMagic was unable to show that their EHR products met ONC’s certification requirements, their EHRs will no longer be certified under the ONC HIT Certification Program.”

Information about ONC’s certification process for EHR technologies is available at http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/certification-process-ehr-technologies.

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April 26, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Companies  EHR Incentive  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Companies  Healthcare IT  HITECH  Meaningful Use
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EHR Incentive Money and Sequestration Update

At HIMSS, the news was tweeted out about the impact of Sequestration on Meaningful Use and EHR incentive money. I’d seen little other details about the impact of sequestration on the EHR incentive money until now. CMS just sent out the following update on the mandated sequestration.

Mandated Sequestration Payment Reductions Beginning for Medicare EHR Incentive Program

Incentive payments made through the Medicare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program are subject to the mandatory reductions in federal spending known as sequestration, required by the Budget Control Act of 2011.

Incentive Payment Reduction
The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 postponed sequestration for two months.  As required by law, President Obama issued a sequestration order on March 1, 2013. Under these mandatory reductions, Medicare EHR incentive payments made to eligible professionals and eligible hospitals will be reduced by 2%.

Reduction Timing
This 2% reduction will be applied to any Medicare EHR incentive payment for a reporting period that ends on or after April 1, 2013. If the final day of the reporting period occurs before April 1, 2013, those incentive payments will not be subject to the reduction.

Please note: This reduction does not apply to Medicaid EHR incentive payments, which are exempt from the mandatory reductions.

The 2% will be a little annoying for a doctor’s office, but the 2% off the multi-million dollar EHR incentive a hospital receives is going to add up to a pretty penny. At least the information is out there so that hospitals can plan. Although, it’s not like you can stop the EHR implementation at this point in the cycle.

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April 11, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Incentive  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare IT  HITECH
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Meaningful Use Attestation Deadline for 2012 and MU Stage 2 Testing Ready

Eligible professionals (EPs) who participated in the Medicare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program in 2012 must complete attestation for the 2012 program year by February 28, 2013. In order to be eligible to attest you must have completed your 2012 reporting period by December 31, 2012.

CMS encourages Medicare EPs to register and attest as soon as possible to resolve any potential issues that may delay their payment.

Medicaid EPs should check with their State for their attestation deadline.

Resources from CMS
CMS has several resources located on the EHR Incentive Programs website to help EPs properly meet meaningful use and attest, including:

Also, for EHR vendors, ICSA just announced that they are now set to begin testing EHR software for meaningful use stage 2. That’s right. Meaningful Use stage 2 is just around the corner.

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January 16, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare IT  HITECH  Meaningful Use
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MU Stage 3 Comment Period and Hospital EHR Attestation Deadline Approaching

HIT Policy Committee sent out an email with a request for comments on meaningful use stage 3. Here’s the email that was sent out:

Speak up now to help ONC’s Health Information Technology Policy Committee (HITPC) develop Stage 3 meaningful use recommendations that will target a collaborative model of care with shared responsibility and accountability, building upon previous meaningful use objectives through the Request for Comment.

The comment period is now open. Each item that the HITPC is requesting comment on has been given an identification number in order to streamline the accumulation of comments. Please use this ID number when submitting comments. Submit a comment online.

The deadline for comments is 11:59p.m. ET on January 14, 2013.

Following the analysis of the comments received throughout the comment period, the HITPC intends to revisit these recommendations in its public meetings in the first quarter of 2013.

Also, for those Eligible Hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs), the last day for you to register and submit attestation in fiscal year 2012 for the Medicare EHR program is November 30, 2012. For eligible hospitals and CAHs, this means that they must successfully attest to meeting meaningful use to be eligible to receive an incentive payment for FY 2012.

CMS has also put together this PDF of the meaningful use and EHR incentive timeline. Be careful so you don’t miss any deadlines.

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November 27, 2012 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Incentive  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare IT  HITECH  Meaningful Use
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The Impact of EHR Certification

In the comments of my post on EMR and EHR titled EHR Vendors Using EHR Certification Excuse, Jeff offered a frank comment about the realities EHR vendors face in this current climate:

I went through EHR certification for a EHR product – for the sake of this discussion it can remain nameless as you can insert any EHR name and it will share the same issues. The process was cumbersome and I agree is not worthwhile for our clients. However at least 90% of our clients were requesting it and all of our sales pipelines say they required it. The interaction you describe I have had. I don’t think it’s the fault of us as a vendor as much as the short sightedness of the committee that created the certification rules. We had to implement fields/screens/buttons that served no purpose in the type of practice we supplied our software to. That did not matter to the certification proctor, we had to show it or we failed and lost a lot of money. Getting certified threw off our development cycle at least 6 months. During that time we had to push off many good customer requested enhancements. In hindsight would our customers prefer we did not get certified – probably, but could our company take a chance at not being able to renew contracts or get new sales. No way, not for a government mandated push.

This reminds me of a video I recently saw that asked the question, “What do we want EHR certification to do?” The problem here is that I think everyone has a different answer to that question. Until we define what EHR certification should really accomplish, it’s hard to make criteria that are beneficial and easy to understand. In the rush to meet the regulatory requirements I think we missed creating the bigger vision of why we’re doing EHR certification at all. That’s why we’re where we’re at today.

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October 24, 2012 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Incentive  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare IT  HITECH  Meaningful Use
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Healthbox Expands to European Startups

Healthbox is known for helping new business startups by providing them with seed capital. The company has recently announced it would be expanding its services to London. In July, Healthbox began the search for health tech startups that will bring change to health care in Europe.

They hosted the first of many events across Europe to bring in potential startups, and the final selection was set to take place in September. The startups that were selected are set to receive £75,000 of seed capital, access to Healthbox’s mentors, wider industry network,  and access to Healthbox’s London offices.

Commenting on the launch of Healthbox’s accelerator in London, Nina Nashif, Founder of Healthbox, described why London was chosen to be the hub in Europe, and her feelings about the program:

London was the obvious place to come be part of the UK’s world-renowned academic institutions, science and tech traditions as well as being a gateway to the rest of Europe. It is the natural seedbed for new, passionate entreprenerus looking to grow their ideas. We are looking forward with some amazing people. Healthcare has traditionally been a challenging sector for innovation because by its very nature it has been risk averse. Healthbox has developed a new ecosystem and culture for stimulating change by bringing together early-stage companies with strategic organisations, individuals and investors who mutually benefit from working together on new ideas that transform health. We believe in the power of having a global network for exchange of ideas and learning.

There are several firms that are supporting the program, which include Bupa and Secro and Zone Digital, and there will be mentors from companies such as Care UK, Novo Nordisk, Dell, Deloitte, and DocCom.

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October 12, 2012 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare IT Accellerators  Healthcare IT Investment  HIE  HITECH
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Pingmd and Rxante Receive Fundings to Continue Product Development

FUNDINGS:

Pingmd is an app that connects parents with their child’s pediatrician. The startup behind its creation, Dauphin Health, has raised $1.33 million. The company is based in New York, and was created by Drs. Gopal and Manju Chopra. The app is free, and parents can keep track of vaccinations and allergies, as well as communicate (securely) with their child’s pediatrican.

Pingmd currently has seven employees and thousands of patients have used it so far. There are plans to expand throughout other parts of North America and into Europe. According to Dr. Gopal Chopra the app is “gear towards getting the physician the right information to make a decision.

Directors that were listed on the SEC document included Matthew Greenfield, Ernest Pomerantz, and Rudy Mazzocchi.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember to take prescribed medicine. RxAnte aims to change that. The company develops technology to help remind patients to take medications. And a few weeks ago, RxAnte received a $4.6 million investment. The investment came from Aberdare Ventures and West Health Investment.

According to BizJournals.com, RxAnte’s “technology can predict which patients are likely to stray from their scheduled drug-taking schedules, and what interventions are likely to be most effective.” This funding will help the company continue creating new technology and introducing them to the market

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October 4, 2012 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EMR  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  HIE  HITECH
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October 3 is the Last Day for EPs to Begin the Medicare EHR Incentive Program in 2012

Wednesday, October 3rd marks two important deadlines for the Medicare EHR Incentive Program:

  1. The last day for eligible professionals (EPs) to begin their 90-day reporting period for calendar year (CY) 2012 for the Medicare EHR Incentive Program. For EPs, this means that they must begin their consecutive 90-day reporting period by October 3rd in order to attest to meeting meaningful use and be eligible to receive an incentive payment for CY 2012.
  2. The last day Medicare EPs can start participating and receive their maximum possible Medicare incentive payment. This is the last year that EPs can begin participation in the EHR Incentive Program and get the full Medicare incentives of $44,000 per EP. If first-year Medicare EPs have not started their 90-day reporting period by October 3rd, they will not be eligible for a CY 2012 payment, and can only receive $39,000 in Medicare incentives if they successfully participate in 2013.

For more information on how incentive payments are distributed, take a look at the EHR Basics page of the newly updated EHR website. For EPs who have already completed their reporting period, CMS has a number of tools available to help prepare for attestation, including the Meaningful Use Attestation Calculatorand Attestation User Guide for Eligible Professionals.

Looking Ahead
Take a look at all of the other EHR Incentive Program important dates that are coming up by going to our Health Information Technology Timeline.

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September 25, 2012 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Incentive  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Healthcare IT  HITECH  Meaningful Use
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New Host of Startups Enroll at StartUp Health Academy

A new class of companies will be enrolling in the StartUp Health Academy in the coming weeks. The program is three-years long and involves live and online workshops and demo days.

The newest start-ups that have enrolled include:

  • Avado
  • Beyond Lucid Technologies
  • CakeHealth
  • CarePlanners
  • CareLinx
  • Chemotopia
  • Docphin
  • Empower Interactive
  • Greatist
  • Medikly
  • Rip Road
  • Truth On Call

StartUp Health has had almost 1,000 startups in the academy over the past 10 years. That’s quite a list of companies. A number of them with really interesting history such as Avado founder coming from Microsoft HealthVault and CakeHealth which did really well at TechCrunch Disrupt.

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I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR Companies  EMR  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare IT Conferences  Healthcare IT Investment  Healthcare Social Media  HIE  HITECH
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Predilytics, InCrowd, and Doximity Receive Fundings and Plan to Expand

FUNDINGS

A Facebook for doctors? That’s what Doximity is being called. It started out as a LinkedIn for doctors, but with the addition of a news feed, it’s turning more Facebook-like. The company recently raked in $17 million series B round fundings. It was led by Morgenthaler Ventures, along with participation from Emergence Capital Partners and InterWest Partners.

This is the second round of funding that Doximity has received, which is when the company grew the most. It is a free, social networking tool that is secure and allows doctors to discuss patients, which cannot occur with regular social networks or text messaging. According to VentureBeat, Doximity

. . . hopes to connect doctors so that they can collaborate on cases, identify the right candidate for a referral, send private messages to each other, converse about the latest research, and gain exposure for their practice. It has experienced rapid expansion and recently announced that one in seven physicians in the United States have signed up.

Be sure to look for big things from this company in the future.

Boston-based startup Predilytics combines machine learning and health care to help health care companies run more efficiently. On September 4th, the company announced that it closed on a $6 million Series A round of funding. Contributors include Flybridge Capital Partners, Highland Capital Partners and Google Ventures.

Gigaoam.com quote Predilytics as describing their services as follows:

Predilytics offers a new approach for generating healthcare insights – applying big data, machine learning technology to create transparent, unbiased business driven results. This approach exceptional predictive models that are 2x to 4x more insightful and actionable than conventional statistical/regression modeling and rules-based methods.

Predilytics plans to use this funding to “further expand its product offerings and grow operations with a focus on analytics, information technology, application development and account management.”

InCrowd allows “pharmaceuticals to survey screened and targeted healthcare professionals in real-time.” The company recently closed a $2.2 million Series A round. The round was let by Nauta Capital.

InCrowd has a database of “pre-screened healthcare professionals.” These professionals have opted-in to being in the database. Pharmaceutical companies can take this database and find doctors that fit the description of who they want to to take their survey, and then a survey will be sent out to them.

Thank you to Rockhealth.com for putting together a list of fundings and acquisitions each week. Be sure to check out their weekly newsletter!

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September 14, 2012 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare Social Media  HIE  HITECH
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