An HIT
Palladian Health (West Seneca, New York) reported a technology development partnership to implement ClinicaCDS, a clinical decision support service, as part of its recently disclosed program, Palladian Coordinated Spine Care.
According to the company, Palladian Coordinated Spine Care is a "revolutionary" clinically integrated program that will help patients and clinicians deal with back pain. Spine care costs have reached national epidemic proportions and are estimated to be over $194 billion annually in direct costs alone, the company said. Palladian Coordinated Spine Care provides interactive web based Clinical Decision Support to patients and clinicians to deliver evidence based treatment recommendations at the point of care.
In addition to the use of ClinicaCDS, Palladian Coordinated Spine Care will provide care management outreach to patients with back pain, educational and messaging campaigns on back pain and appropriate treatment methods and utilization management of high cost invasive or unsupported procedures. Palladian Coordinated Spine Care will integrate with each client's benefit management and data infrastructure, coordinating and leveraging already existing capabilities and clinical information.
Palladian and Religent (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina) have agreed to jointly develop Palladian CareManager, an application that will integrate on a real time basis with ClinicaCDS and Palladian's broad set of clinical data to facilitate Palladian's care management programs. Religent and Clinica have agreed that Palladian is their exclusive partner for muscular skeletal and diagnostic imaging initiatives.
Religent is a software development company that serves the life sciences and healthcare markets. ClinicaCDS is a decision-support application that was originally developed by two Duke University (Durham, North Carolina) faculty members. ClinicaCDS is a centralized, scalable and standards based decision support system that is currently being used in a number of clinical settings such as: disease management, population health management, and breast cancer screening.
In other agreements/contracts news:
• Apria Healthcare Group (Lake Forest, California) and Perot Systems (Plano, Texas) reported an agreement in which the global technology solutions provider will deliver to Apria Healthcare a range of healthcare information technology solutions, including the management of data center operations and applications solutions, as well as consulting services. The term of the contract is for 10 years.
"When we sought and evaluated the IT services providers that could support our growing business, we chose a company with a proven record of providing IT and business solutions to the healthcare industry and the ability to meet our complex needs around-the-clock," said Norman Payson, MD, CEO of Apria Healthcare. "Perot Systems has the capabilities, the scope of services and the experience we need. Our alliance with Perot Systems will provide greater flexibility, quality, and efficiency in our IT operations."
• HealthPartners (Bloomington, Minnesota) reported that members could now transfer information from their HealthPartners account directly to Microsoft (Redmond, Washington) HealthVault. Members will be able to permanently access their health information and share it free of charge, even if they change jobs, health plans or doctors, the company said.
HealthVault is an open platform designed to put people in control of their health information. People can use HealthVault to store copies of their health records obtained from their providers, plans, pharmacies, government, or employers; upload information from health and fitness devices; share information with healthcare providers and trainers; and access products and services.
• Initiate Systems (Chicago) has partnered with Axolotl (San Jose). Following product integration in Axolotl's engineering labs, the two healthcare technology companies will deliver solutions that enable interoperability between healthcare information systems in hospitals, Integrated Delivery Networks, Regional Healthcare Information Organizations and statewide healthcare exchanges.
• iMedica (Dallas), a developer of healthcare software solutions for physician practices, reported that after more than two years of research and consideration, the Physicians' Organization of the University Medical Center at Princeton has chosen iMedica's electronic health record (EHR) and practice management (PM) solutions to recommend to its 500-plus member physicians.
The announcement comes as the nation's healthcare system awaits $19 billion in federal stimulus funds for health information technology, which coincides with the government's commitment to provide everyone in the U.S. with an EHR by 2014. In addition, the Physicians' Organization's decision to recommend iMedica reinforces its commitment to become one of the first clinically integrated physicians' organizations in New Jersey.
"Physicians need flexible electronic solutions in order to address the clinical and business needs of their practices, and iMedica has designed its software to help physicians easily move away from paper-based methods," said Michael Nissenbaum, president/CEO of iMedica. "iMedica hopes to provide these Princeton-area physicians with the guidance and products they need in order to become a more clinically integrated medical group."
• MedAssets (Alpharetta, Georgia) reported that three health systems have signed multi-year agreements to implement MedAssets' claims management solutions to help increase their net revenue and cash flow. These healthcare providers include: Greenville Hospital System (Greenville, South Carolina); Partners HealthCare (Boston); and Riverside Health System (Newport News, Virginia).
MedAssets' claims management solution offers a web-based suite of workflow tools that help providers improve claims accuracy and revenue capture. This solution increases net revenue and improves cash flow by eliminating errors, reducing denied claims, capturing lost revenue and improving upstream processes, according to the company.
• Medsphere Systems (Carlsbad, California), a provider of healthcare IT solutions, reported that the new 11-bed Blue Mountain Hospital (Blanding, Utah), will implement its OpenVista electronic health records solution. As a rural and primary care facility, Blue Mountain Hospital plans to fully deploy OpenVista in only three months, the company noted.
• OptumHealth (Golden Valley, Minnesota) said it is collaborating with American Well (Boston) to offer the first nationwide service allowing individuals immediate access to physicians and clinicians via two-way video, secure chat, the phone or a corporation's health care portal.
OptumHealth says it helps individuals navigate the health care system, finance their health care needs and achieve their health and well-being goals. American Well says it has created a new health care marketplace where consumers and physicians can come together online to acquire and provide convenient and immediate health care services.
• RemitDATA (Memphis, Tennessee), a provider of web-based productivity tools and benchmarking to the outpatient healthcare market, reported a multi-year agreement with VHA (Irving, Texas), the national healthcare alliance, to optimize reimbursement and operational efficiencies for its 23,000-plus non-acute care members nationwide.
Using RemitDATA's tools, Reiembursement PRO and WebScan PRO, VHA's non-acute members can improve and simplify their reimbursement and business operations by reducing denials, accelerating cash flow and enhancing work flow processes, the company said. In addition, the aggregated payer data collected via Reimbursement PRO will provide VHA members with real-time payer benchmarks to make the most informed decisions to enhance their practice's profitability.
• Satori World Medical (San Diego) reported a new partnership with Integrated Healthcare (Boston). Integrated Healthcare provides point-and-click technology that allows consumers to access details on their Health Reimbursement Account (HRA), Health Savings Account (HSA), and Flexible Spending Account (FSA) to stretch their healthcare dollars.
Steven Lash, Satori president/CEO, said, "This partnership was natural; it just made sense. Both our companies focus on promoting and engaging consumer choice with cost-effective solutions and tools to guide consumers in making informed decisions. Integrated Healthcare focuses on providing solutions to medium sized employers and the brokers and Third Party Administrators who serve them. This is also a market which benefits from Satori World Medical's value-added consumer-directed product which provides significant cost-saving solutions."
• ShiftWise (Portland, Oregon), a provider of end-to-end workforce solutions, reported a partnership with the Hospital Association of Southern California (HASC; Los Angeles) to deliver Software as a Service (SaaS) to Southern California hospitals. Through its partnership with ShiftWise, HASC will offer comprehensive software solutions and services for managing contingent labor to its expansive list of more than 150 hospitals.
"The journey to find a workforce solution partner for HASC member hospitals so that they can more effectively manage contingent labor usage clearly led us to ShiftWise," said Scott Twomey, senior vice president of HASC. "Our member hospitals requested a solution to their workforce needs and, after an exhaustive review of what was available in the market, we are pleased to recommend the ShiftWise solution to our constituents."
ShiftWise's web-based, end-to-end workforce solution enables hospitals to effortlessly manage their internal and external contingent labor usage. Hospitals ultimately benefit from unmatched control over their staffing process as the service consolidates ordering, license and credential management, billing and self-scheduling into a single, easy-to-use online service. ShiftWise is currently used in over 750 hospitals nationally.
• Socket Mobile (Newark, California), a provider of mobile productivity solutions, and Optimus EMR (Irvine, California), a provider of electronic medical records to the long-term care industry, have partnered to launch a joint solution for long-term care facilities. The solution incorporates the Socket SoMo 650Rx handheld computer with antimicrobial casing, and Optimus EMR software.
The Optimus EMR and Socket solution reduces the time consuming task of tracking and documenting patient care activities. Using the SoMo 650Rx hand-held computer and the Optimus EMR software, providers can update computerized patient records in real-time. The addition of an RFID reader as a mobile peripheral allows the SoMo 650Rx to read RFID tags in the facility to further increase accuracy and efficiency for care providers.
The Socket SoMo 650Rx provides the durability needed for a long-term care environment, and the antimicrobial casing of the PDA also provides an extra layer of protection against the multiplication and spread of potentially harmful bacteria and microbes. This extra protection is important when it comes to technology deployments in long-term care facilities. The SoMo 650Rx also has built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and an extended battery, allowing providers to collect and input data from anywhere on a campus for a full work day.