Today’s EHR and HIT News includes an item from Amerinet and a customer process with supply chain management, news from athenahealth that they will begin working with the Maryland State Medical Society and an update on an investment funding round from from SA Ignite.
Amerinet Helps Coshocton Hospital Modernize Inventory and Supply Chain Processes
Amerinet, a leading national healthcare solutions organization, recently worked with long-time member Coshocton Hospital to realize more than $100,000 in cost-savings and create a new inventory system for surgical supplies with built-in cost efficiencies.
“Our Amerinet partnership provided assistance with realizing cost-savings on surgical items, allowing us to create an inventory with built-in cost efficiencies. The switch to an Amerinet vendor for gloves alone resulted in $40,000 annual savings, and over $100,000 overall. This has set the standard for conversions throughout the hospital,” said Robert Miller, CEO, Coshocton County Memorial Hospital.
Located about a hundred miles from major metropolitan centers like Cleveland, Columbus and Pittsburgh, Coshocton is a rural 56-bed acute care community hospital and network of clinics working hard to keep compassionate, accessible and state-of-the-art care close to home. Coshocton has taken a leadership role in implementing new services and technologies, keeping pace with advancements in diagnosis and treatment previously only available at large urban healthcare centers.
In anticipation of a new electronic health records (EHR) system Coshocton executed a brand new “perpetual inventory” process: real-time electronic accounting that continuously reconciles actual stock-on-hand with “book” estimates. Reasonable par levels for each item were established from a review of the department’s historical case load and Amerinet worked with the facility’s task force to help discover the best possible pricing and service options available to fully stock their surgery department. They also helped to provide the quantitative documentation and accurate, reliable reporting required for seamless integration into the new purchasing protocols.
athenahealth and MedChi to Streamline Practice Management and Improve Care Coordination for Maryland Physicians
athenahealth has announced that they will work with MedChi, The Maryland State Medical Society. This collaboration is intended to help Maryland physicians more easily realize the clinical and financial benefits of cloud-based services in their practices.
As part of this relationship, MedChi will offer its members across the state of Maryland an easy path to accessing and implementing, at a discount, athenahealth’s suite of cloud-based services, including athenaClinicals®, the company’s EHR offering; athenaCollector®, its practice management and medical billing offering; athenaCommunicator®, its patient communication service; and athenaCoordinator®, its care coordinationservice. Physicians who implement these services benefit from the knowledge and best practices of athenahealth’s network of more than 35,000 physicians nationwide, who are kept current with ever-changing clinical requirements and payer rules—so that they can stay focused on quality patient care.
Gene Ransom, MedChi CEO, said, “For many physicians in Maryland, adapting to today’s complex health care environment is daunting. Some practices have been disadvantaged in efforts to qualify for Meaningful Use dollars or become Accountable Care Organizations, while others are putting disproportionate time and resources towards front-of-office administration. These physicians need solutions to stay viable businesses. We’ve chosen to work with athenahealth because they have proven to be a trusted partner for physicians and hospitals. athenahealth knows how to navigate the inefficiencies physician practices deal with every day and help them keep their focus on providing care.”
SA Ignite Closes Series A VC Funding
SA Ignite, Chicago-based creator of MU Assistant®, which automates the “last mile” of achieving Meaningful Use (MU) by automating MU reporting and enabling one-click electronic attestation to CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services), has closed a Series A round of venture capital funding.
The lead investor is Aligned Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage information technology companies that have demonstrated both initial product traction and a commitment to capital-efficiency.
“There’s a lot of excitement in the fast-growing B2B health IT space,” said Jodi Sherman Jahic, General Partner, Aligned Partners. “As it grows, we see SA Ignite becoming the de-facto ‘Turbo Tax’ for Meaningful Use reporting as well as for other provider data reporting and monitoring needs.”
MU Assistant, a cloud-based software solution, automatically aggregates and monitors MU measures, across multiple EHR systems, and provides decision support tools such as enabling easy selection of 90-day windows (for Medicare Payment Year 1) and suggesting MU exclusions that providers may claim. The MU Assistant then electronically files providers’ data to the Medicare attestation web site, providing a one-click attestation process, and electronically archives supporting data for potential audits.
“SA Ignite is thrilled to be working with Aligned Partners,” said Tom S. Lee, PhD, CEO and founder, SA Ignite. “We look forward to benefitting from their expertise in taking capital-efficient cloud startups to the next level.”
In recent weeks, SA Ignite has added Intermountain Healthcare, Medical College of Wisconsin, George Washington Medical Faculty Associates, Riverside Medical Group (VA), and Queens Long Island Medical Group (NY) to its list of clients. Founded in 2009, SA Ignite has helped providers garner millions dollars in MU incentives across multiple EHR products.
