meridianEMR^®, a market-leader in EHR for Urology, announced today the launch of a native iPhone^® app to complement the meridianEMR system. meridianMobile^® for iPhone combines the rich functionality of the meridianEMR system with the mobility and fluid interactivity of the iPhone.It gives Urologistssecure access to their real-time EHR data – right in the palm of their hands.

meridianMobile for iPhone was designed to help Urologists streamline workflow and improve patient care. The app enables them to move seamlessly between the hospital or clinic, office, home, and beyond while maintaining comprehensive, convenient, and HIPAA-compliant access to their most current EHR data. Urologists can retrieve and modify up-to-the-minute patient information, office visits, and appointments. They can also access patient pharmacy information, medication refill alerts, patient photos, billing information, and more.

“Thank you, meridianEMR. This is very good…It is very intuitive and easy to use,” commented meridianMobile for iPhone user, Charles M. Lash, MD, Advance Urology and Continence Center of Wauseon, OH.

Since meridianMobile for iPhone is a native app, it has been exclusively optimized for use on the familiar iPhone device Urologists rely on, making the app fast, user-friendly, and powerful. Plus, there is no need to sync the iPhone to the EHR system. With meridianMobile for iPhone, data is kept up-to-date automatically. All data is stored on the Urologist’s office EHR, and meridianMobile for iPhone efficiently exchanges current information with it as required.

“We are committed to the development of new products and services to enhance our EHR system. meridianEMR is currently the only Urology-specific EHR to offer a native iPhone app. We recognize the need for this type of mobility in EHR and believe that is the direction of the future,” commented Bill Bartlett, meridianEMR Vice President of Technology and Chief Architect of meridianMobile for iPhone.

meridianMobile for iPhone runs on iPhone; iPod touch^® 3G/3GS/4/4S; and/or iPad^®/iPad2, in conjunction with the meridianEMR Version 5.2.3 or higher and a wireless/internet connection. It is available on the App Store^SM. meridianEMR clients can simply purchase and download it directly to their iPhones.

Forty-two hospitals have successfully attested to Stage 1 Meaningful Use using T-System’s certified emergency department information system, The T SystemEV®, according to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. A third-party comparative analysis by blogger Brian Ahier posted to the Government Health IT website illustrates that T-System ranks eighth on a list of the top 10 electronic health records vendors in terms of facility attestations. The company further distinguished itself by being the only departmental vendor named to the list.

“We are pleased that T-System enabled 42 organizations to qualify for Meaningful Use incentives,” said Robert Hitchcock, M.D., FACEP, T-System vice president and chief medical informatics officer. “More importantly, the information we’ve received from our clients indicates that Meaningful Use attainment with T-System did not negatively impact hospitals’ operations or revenue. We’re anticipating that several more clients will attest in the very near future, and we’re actively supporting their progress along the way.”

T-System solutions have one of the industry’s highest rates of user adoption, 100 percent at almost every site, which has contributed to T SystemEV clients being able to easily reach the required threshold minimums for Meaningful Use criteria. T SystemEV has one of the most complete ONC-ATCB certifications that includes computerized provider order entry (CPOE) and clinical quality measures, a Meaningful Use criteria for which few best-of-breed EDISs are certified. In addition, T SystemEV provides out-of-the-box reports for tracking progress of Meaningful Use compliance.

“Achieving Stage 1 Meaningful Use was a significant 2011 milestone for us,” said Dean Gushee, M.D., M.S., FACEP, medical director of Mason General Hospital & Family of Clinics, a Shelton, Wash.-based critical-access public hospital district that treats 21,000 ED patients annually. “We wouldn’t have been able to successfully attest without T-System. The ease of use and functionality of T SystemEV enabled us to dramatically improve cross-department communication and ED performance. For example, we have reduced the average time it takes for patients to be seen by a physician to 40 minutes after they walk through the door. The solution also helped us cut the rate of patients who leave without being seen to less than 2 percent and average length of stay to two hours.”

NorthCrest Medical Center will deploy AllscriptsSunrise Clinical Manager™ acute care Electronic Health Record to support its mission of becoming one of the nation’s best hospitals.

“Our goal at NorthCrest is to be the best hospital across every measure of patient care, and Allscripts will help us get there,” said Scott Raynes, Chief Executive Officer of NorthCrest, a 109-bed hospital that was recently named one of the nation’s top performers on key quality measures by The Joint Commission. “We believe Allscripts will also help us take better care of our community as we expand the partnership that has served us well for more than a decade.”

Sunrise Clinical Manager will build on NorthCrest’s portfolio of Allscripts solutions including Allscripts ED in the Emergency Department and the Allscripts ambulatory Electronic Health Record used by its employed physician group, NorthCrest Physician Services. NorthCrest plans to deploy the Allscripts Community Exchange to efficiently connect and manage electronic transactions of all kinds between the hospital and community/affiliated physician practices, many of whom also use the Allscripts ambulatory Electronic Health Record.

“Sunrise is the last piece of the puzzle in a care continuum where we now have the three main settings of care – the hospital, the ED, and the physician’s office – connected on the same vendor platform so our providers will always have access to the most critical patient information,” said Randy Davis, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of NorthCrest. “Sunrise also has the built-in analytics we need to monitor and improve our quality performance as we prepare for value-based reimbursement.”

Sunrise Clinical Manager provides state-of-the-art Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) as well as integrated pharmacy, knowledge-based medication administration, patient portal and acute and critical care solutions. To help monitor clinical performance and improve patient outcomes across its facilities, NorthCrest will deploy Sunrise Clinical Analytics, a powerful business intelligence and data mining tool. Sunrise Clinical Analytics also provides Meaningful Use certified quality reporting technology that is expected to help NorthCrest satisfy the Stage 2 and Stage 3 requirements of the federal HITECH Act. The hospital achieved Stage 1 attestation in October, 2011, using Allscripts ED.

Angie Beard, MSN, RN, CCRN, the hospital’s Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer, said it was Allscripts ease of use and strong focus on enhancing patient safety that convinced NorthCrest’s nurses to embrace the solution.

“When we were weighing Allscripts against other vendors, our nurses were ecstatic to discover there wasn’t a single thing we wanted that Sunrise couldn’t demonstrate with live functionality,” said Beard. “We believe it will increase our nurse’s efficiency while improving employee satisfaction and giving us more care time with our patients because it’s so easy and fast to use.”

George Dahir, M.D., orthopaedic surgeon at NorthCrest Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine in Springfield, said he was looking forward to the connectivity between Sunrise Clinical Manager, the ED solution and his own Allscripts EHR.

“Wherever I see one of my patients; whether in the hospital as an inpatient, in the emergency department during an emergency, or in my office for a check-up or follow-up visit, through the EHR systems I will have access to all of their medical information that I need in one location,” said Dr. Dahir. “This initiative will improve the level of care that my practice and others will be able to provide to the community.”

Glen Tullman, Chief Executive Officer of Allscripts, said, “Our goal is to help NorthCrest Medical Center achieve its vision by delivering the timely clinical insights that will help NorthCrest’s providers improve health outcomes for their patients. Together, we’re building a Connected Community of Health for the patients of Tennessee and Kentucky.”

Webcare Developments Inc. has introduced an application programming interface (API) that  will allow WebCare3D to link to EMR products, providing practitioners a program linking patient management at both the treatment and administrative levels. This integration can provide EMR companies another feature to strengthen their brand in this competitive market. WebCare 3D is the innovative Physical Therapy Patient Education Program poised to revolutionize the patient-practitioner relationship.

Peter Ruttan, practicing Physical Therapist, states “the WebCare3D product has changed the way I communicate with my patients, having one program that provides patient education, rehab and records patient data, allows me to spend more treating ”

Currently the Global Market Leader in the field of 3D Animation and Rehabilitation Programming specific to Physical Therapy, WebCare3D stands alone with over 350 condition based 3D animations and thousands of video rehabilitation exercises all relevant to physical medicine.  These highly visual and anatomically accurate animations create an easier to understand and long term retention learning experience for the patient. Repeated studies have proven that people are both visual and right brain learners and that 3D animations are a more successful delivery mechanism for information.

Webcare Developments Inc was founded by a group of highly qualified Physical Therapists, and other physical medicine specialists in collaboration with world leading medical animators to create a product they believe is unique in the Physical Therapy industry.

Greenway Medical Technologies is set to go public tomorrow with an $80 million initial public offering set for Thursday, February, 3rd.

In what is rapidly becoming a hot IPO market Greenway is set to join eight other new stock offerings this week.

Greenway intends to issue roughly 6.7 million shares, priced between $11 and $13, to raise $80 million in capital.  At $12.00 per share Greenway would have a market cap of $347 million.  The firm’s NYSE ticker will be GWAY.

According the website IPOScoop.com Greenway currently has 530 employees and it has generated $99 million in revenue over the past twelve months.  The IPO at $12.00 per share would value the company about 3.5 times trailing twelve month revenue.  As a comparison Allscripts is currently trading at a price that values the company at 5.25 times trailing twelve month revenue.

It will be interesting to see how the initial offering is received and what happens to the stock over the coming months.

Advanced Data Systems Corporation (ADS) has announced the integration of their MedicsDocAssistant™ certified EHR with Midmark’s IQecg™, IQspiro™ and IQholter™ devices. The integration allows for the seamless embedding of clean, clear images, charts, graphs, and reports directly from the Midmark devices into the patient’s MedicsDocAssistant record.

MedicsDocAssistant then allows physicians to view side-by-side comparisons of current and previous findings to determine patient progress. In addition, with Midmark IQpath™ technology, the devices work seamlessly in an ASP or thin-client environment, reducing data loss and corruption due to network congestion or latency issues.

“The integration between Midmark’s equipment and the ADS MedicsDocAssistant EHR is truly extraordinary,” commented Jeff Wagner, Midmark EHR Account Manager. “It incorporates market-leading dynamics that enable users to adjust representations, create a variety of graphs, and view static and moving images.”

Attaching results to the patient’s record from the Midmark device creates a significant time savings for the practice. Physicians can easily view data, observe changes, and issue new orders, lab requests, medications, etc., directly from the patient’s record in MedicsDocAssistant.

David Barzillai, President of ADS said, “Working with the Midmark team was a pleasure, with our programmers being able to go above and beyond in creating more than just a bridge between the device and the EHR. The result is a truly remarkable capability that will have a direct and positive impact on patients’ healthcare and wellbeing.”

Macadamian, a leader in user experience design and software development, will be presenting at HIMSS 2012, the largest worldwide annual healthcare IT conference, taking place February 20-24 in Las Vegas. Melanie Rodney PhD, Director of Usability Research at Macadamian and Nancy Staggers PhD, RN, FAAN from the University of Maryland, in conjunction with HIMSS, will be outlining their unique online self-assessment checklist, with which hospitals and health institutions can determine their level of “usability maturity” in relation to their EHR (electronic health record) technologies.

The self-assessment checklist asks a series of questions regarding current usability awareness and practices within a healthcare organization. It provides an assessment of the current level of usability maturity along with suggested actions for improvement. The checklist is intended to assist organizations in working towards future stages of the ONC Meaningful Use EHR adoption initiative, which provides guidelines for standardized EHR functionality criteria required for providers to achieve certification, quality reporting and incentive payments.

“EHR usability is vital to health provider organizations. At the individual level, easier to use EHRs support enhanced effectiveness and efficiency by increasing productivity, decreasing errors and improving cognitive support,” said Dr. Rodney. “At the organizational level, increased data efficiencies are correlated to cost reductions, and it should be noted that the decreased individual errors which impact patient safety also accrue to the organization as a whole in delivering positive patient outcomes.”

•     When: Wednesday February 22, 1:00 p.m.
•     Where: Room Lando 4303, Venetian Sands Expo Convention Center

ChartLogic has announced today that Louisiana Health Care Practitioners has selected the ChartLogic EHR Suite. Louisiana Health Care Practitioners operates four stand-alone facilities in Alexandria, Cottonport, Mansura and Simmesport, Louisiana. Three of the clinics are designated as federal rural health clinics. The medical group employs four nurse practitioners under the guidance of one physician.“

According to Buzz Jeansonne, nurse practitioner and owner of Louisiana Health Care Practitioners, the ChartLogic EMR will enable integration between the clinics, which are 10-25 miles apart from each other. Between the four clinics, Louisiana Health Care Practitioners sees between 150 and 200 patients a day, and is responsible for meeting Medicare and Medicaid rural health clinic reporting requirements. According to Jeansonne, the ChartLogic EHR Suite will make that reporting easier to document and transmit.

“ChartLogic’s software is simple to use and the Precision Voice component will make dictation and charting much easier. The customizable templates take into account the differing styles of each clinician,” Jeansonne said.

The clinics will adopt the ChartLogic EHR Suite including the ChartLogic EMR (electronic medical record), ChartLogic Document Management, ChartLogic ePrescribe, ChartLogic Patient Portal and ChartLogic Practice Management. With these tools, nurse practitioners in the medical group will be able to work from a single database from any clinic, prescribe medications electronically, improve coding accuracy with easily customizable templates, and communicate with patients through a patient portal.

“As rural health clinics struggle to recruit physicians, providing the latest EHR technology is important. ChartLogic’s EHR meets the unique needs of rural clinics which are often remote and lacking in IT staff,” said Brad Melis, founder and executive vice president, ChartLogic.

The ChartLogic EHR is fully certified for the federal meaningful use program and more than 164 customers have qualified for payments to date.

The Illinois Health Information Technology Regional Extension Center (IL-HITREC), along with its service partner SA Ignite, Inc., celebrated the successful attestation milestone reached Jan. 23, by Fox Valley Women and Children’s Health Partners, in St. Charles.

The Fox Valley practice successfully attested to receive Medicare’s Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records Stage 1 incentive payment. It was the first practice in the nation to use SA Ignite’s MU Assistant cloud-based solution to electronically file its attestation to CMS.

“We could not have done this on our own. IL-HITREC and SA Ignite were extremely effective in providing the guidance we needed to achieve qualification for meaningful use measurements,” said Dr. Steven Bush, MD, President of Fox Valley Women and Children’s Health Partners.

“We needed a technology solution to help guide us through the labyrinth of the CMS Meaningful Use achievement and attestation process,” said Dr. Bush. “Our EHR was working well, but we needed something to help us over that last hurdle of documenting and attesting to our usage. IL-HITREC partnered us with SA Ignite and its MU Assistant provided the support we needed.

“The system tracked our clinicians’ daily usage, aggregated the information and provided analysis that helped us predict future compliance and incorporate needed changes to CMS regulations. The time and labor saving value provided by the system’s e-filing of our attestation documents cannot be over-stated,” said Dr. Bush added.

IL-HITREC is one of 64 Regional Extension Centers in the U.S designated by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). The HIT Regional Extension Centers were established as part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act; Title IV in Division B of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Signed into law by President Obama Feb. 17, 2009, the HITECH Act authorizes the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to provide a reimbursement incentive for physician and hospital providers who demonstrate the meaningful use of an EHR.

The ARRA stimulus package includes financial incentives for healthcare providers who achieve meaningful use with an EHR. Medicare incentives can provide up to $44,000 per provider over five years, and Medicaid incentives up to $63,750 per provider over six years.

“This is a significant milestone achievement for us,” said Roger Holloway, Co-Director of IL-HITREC. “Our vision was to provide a system that would save significant time and improve efficiencies for our providers on their path to meeting meaningful use criteria. The MU Assistant has fulfilled that vision.”

“IL-HITREC congratulates Dr. Bush and his team. As one of the nation’s Regional Extension Centers, our mission is to guide priority primary care physicians to use an electronic health record system in a meaningful way. This will improve the quality and efficiency of patient care in Illinois,” added John L. Lewis, Co-Director of IL-HITREC.
After Dr. Bush “pushed the electronic button” to successfully attest on Jan. 23, he acknowledged his staff, IL-HITREC and SA Ignite representatives during a celebratory lunch in the offices of Fox Valley Women and Children’s Health Partners.

During the program, SA Ignite founder, Tom Lee, called the software “the TurboTaxÒ equivalent for achieving Meaningful Use and attestation.”

The MU Assistant helps providers navigate the currently manual and time-intensive step of translating EHR vendor MU reports into the CMS attestation web-site.  Once workflows have been redesigned and providers are live on an EHR, the SA Ignite software helps automatically aggregate and monitor MU measures across the EHR and provides analysis of where usage gaps are occurring.

After the gaps have been filled, the system helps providers select 90-day windows (for those attesting in their first payment year) and automatically matches their MU data 1:1 with attestation forms. The MU Assistant then electronically files the data to the Medicare attestation website, providing a one-click attestation process.

“The time-saving element was my favorite feature of the system,” said Kathy Foley, Fox Valley Women and Children’s Health Partner’s Director of Clinical Services, OBGYN. “It is my responsibility to sift through the mountains of data to make sure the doctors are doing everything they need to become compliant with the MU criteria. The system relieved us of this onerous burden.”

To attest to meaningful use, eligible physicians must report numerator, denominator, and exclusion results, if applicable, for the meaningful use objectives and attest that they have successfully met the requirements of the program.  Once eligible physicians have successfully completed an online submission through the CMS attestation system, they can qualify for either Medicare or Medicaid EHR incentive payments.