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Government Health IT Conference and Exhibition, not just for the public sector

Schwartz MSL spoke with David Collins, MHA, CPHQ, CPHIMS, FHIMSS, senior director of professional development at HIMSS, to learn more about the upcoming Government Health IT Conference and Exhibition, which will take place at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC, June 11 – 12. Already in its eighth year, the theme of the show is appropriately named 2012: The Year of Critical IT Decisions to Transform Healthcare.

David, why should healthcare marketers, even those in the private sector, consider going to this show?

An organization doesn’t need to be in the public sector to gain the benefits of the topics and sessions we’ll be offering. There will also be an exhibit hall and an Interoperability Showcase. People can network with those with whom they might not ordinarily network in a smaller setting for a reasonable period of time. We are expecting a record 550 attendees this year. Our sessions cover a range of topics from HIE and patient engagement to Beacon Communities, mobile devices and telemedicine. These topics relate to the day-to-day use of healthcare IT.

We also have formidable keynote speakers from the Department of Defense, Veteran Affairs and CMS on the front and back end including: Karen S. Guice, M.D., M.P.P., principal deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, Barclay Butler, Ph.D. - director, Interagency Program Office of the U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and Vish Sankaran, senior advisor, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

What are some of the topics the sessions will be covering?

Through networking opportunities, panel discussions, case studies and demonstrations involving the federal experts responsible for developing and implementing policy, attendees will gain a deeper understanding of how they can be more effective in advancing initiatives in the public sector.

We are pleased at the depth and breadth of topics we’ll be covering in three tracks. The first track is called, Innovative Knowledge Exchange, which aligns well with HIEs. It will cover private HIE successes and the government’s efforts in this area. There will be some great lessons to be learned bi-directionally with respect to infrastructure, security, buy-in from all levels and patient engagement.

The second track, The Changing Landscape of Health IT, will address the many moving parts among areas such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), ICD-10 and meaningful use. Participants will learn the best approaches to providing patient care and conducting business in today’s volatile public policy environment to truly transform healthcare. This track will also include a panel of people from the HIMSS legal task force, the American Health Lawyers’ Association and the American Bar Association to speak to the potential impact of the Supreme Court’s decision on the PPACA.

There will also be an Industry Solution Sessions track, in which sponsors will showcase real-life implementation experiences and share case studies and practical solutions. This year’s focus includes: The role of the connected consumer, mobile health and return on health IT investment.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Yes, we recorded a radio panel titled, "Health IT: A Policy Change Agent," on WTOP radio which aired today. Moderated by HIMSS Executive Vice President Carla Smith, the panelists, former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James Peake, former U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, and ONC’s Deputy National Coordinator for Programs and Policy (and HIMSS board liaison) Judy Murphy covered a range of hot topics:

1. The Impact of the Supreme Court’s Decision on the Affordable Care Act
2. Health Information Exchange: Challenges & Opportunities, Bridging Private & Public HIEs
3. Beacon Communities: Lessons Learned
4. Clinical/Business Intelligence: Harnessing Data to Inform Decision Making
5. eConnecting with Consumers: Provider/Patient Engagement through Health IT
6. Meaningful Use as a Catalyst
7. Harnessing & Streamlining the power of Health IT

This was a dynamic conversation with rich exchange and insight into how policy is shaping health IT, and how health IT is helping to drive engagement and improved outcomes in the healthcare industry. Many of these topics will be addressed at the Government Health IT Conference 2012 by experts from both the private and federal sectors.

If you would like to learn more about the show, feel free to contact David Collins at dcollins@himss.org.

Tags: Government Health IT, HIMSS, trade show

By Davida Dinerman on May 17, 2012 11:23 AM Permalink

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Healthcare IT Trends to Watch, Week of 5/7 - 5/11

Each day at Schwartz MSL, the Healthcare IT Practice shares news items on the latest industry trends. Following is a round-up of some of the most relevant story highlights from the past week:

According to Don Berwick, former CMS administrator, $1 out of every $3 spent on healthcare is wasted. In an article by Frank Vinluan of MedCity News titled, “Don Berwick on healthcare spending: ‘We have to improve our way out of this’,” he cited Toyota as an example of a company that realized performance improvements by changing processes. In Japanese, the word for continuous improvement is ‘kaizen.’ These efforts generate new efficiencies, which in turn reduces costs. This is a good example of how healthcare can learn from other industries.

Sara Jackson of Healthcarevendorsdaily.com wrote an article stating that high prices and technology costs are what are driving skyrocketing healthcare costs in the U.S., not high utilization rates, according to a new report from the Commonwealth Fund.

A recent survey from ZocDoc and Harris Interactive found that digitally-savvy Gen Y adults (those between the ages of 18 and 34) think health care is so frustrating that more than half said they delay medical care because the process is a “pain.” Read more in Ki Mae Heussner’s article titled, “How can tech help health care target Gen Y?” in GigaOm.

Nicole Lewis of InformationWeek-Healthcare wrote, “ACOs Need Better Data Transparency, Management,” which quoted Cynthia Burghard, research director at IDC Health Insight, as saying, “As IT executives at health plans and healthcare delivery organizations strive to establish successful accountable care initiatives, they'll need to develop more transparent procedures and practices as they analyze business and clinical data.”

In his article titled, “Stage 2 Crunch Time Comes for CMS,” Joe Goedert of Health Data Management summarized what different constituencies think of the Meaningful Use Stage 2 proposal , “Following established patterns, providers and vendors in unison sent an overriding message to CMS on requirements of the proposed rule: ‘Too much, too fast.’ Consumer groups had a far different message: ‘Good start, but give us more.’ Providers and vendors want a 90- or 180-day reporting period for the first year of Stage 2 instead of a full year.

ONC's Office of the Chief Privacy Officer (OCPO) has published a ”Guide to Privacy and Security of Health Information,” which aims to help physicians, nurses and IT staff better understand how the safety of patient data is essential to meaningful use of electronic health records and mobile devices, wrote Mike Milliard of Healthcare IT News.

Many frustrated providers are asking whether mandated quality measures, and all the work they have to do to collect them, will really improve quality. The problem is that many of these measures, such as those evaluating stroke care or prevention of thromboembolism, were endorsed in settings that used hand-written notes in medical records. Now those notes must be adapted for use by EHR systems. Cheryl Clark of HealthLeaders Media goes into more depth in her article, “Meaningful Use Quality Measures May Be Meaningless.”

“Chilmark report sees HIEs moving into 'post-EHR era,'” wrote Mike Miliard in Healthcare Payer News. While some $560 million in federal health information exchange funding may soon run dry, changing reimbursement models mean market-driven growth will continue, says the new report on HIEs from Chilmark Research. Increasing HIE technology adoption is spurred by two factors, say researchers. First is the need to meet proposed Stage 2 meaningful use requirements, which puts a far greater emphasis on data exchange. Second, and more crucially, big changes on the horizon with regard to reimbursement means that healthcare organizations are implementing HIE technology to support community-wide care coordination.

Tags: ACO, Chilmark Research, Commonwealth Fun, Don Berwick, EHR, Gen-Y adults, GigaOm, Health Data Management, healthcare IT, Healthcare IT News, Healthcare Payer News, HealthLeaders, HIE, InformationWeek-Healthcare, Meaningful Use, Privacy, Schwartz MSL

By Davida Dinerman on May 11, 2012 5:52 PM Permalink

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Healthcare IT Trends to Watch, Week of 4/30 - 5/4, 2012

Each day at Schwartz MSL, the Healthcare IT Practice shares news items on not only the latest industry trends, such as population health, ACOs, virtualization and EHRs, but also hard-pressing issues such as the rise in obesity and its impact on healthcare costs, what worries C-level executives, and how to curb wasteful spending in healthcare. Here are highlights from last week's news stories:

Sharon Begley at Reuters starts us off with “As American’s Waistline Expands, Costs Soar.” It’s no surprise that the nation's rate of obesity has risen considerable. Businesses, governments and individuals are now coming to grips with the costs of those extra pounds. The additional medical spending due to obesity is double previous estimates and exceeds even those of smoking, a new study shows.

Annie Lowrey’s article in the New York Times titled, “In Hopeful Sign, Health Spending is Flattening Out,” might be misleading. In it, she reports that the growth of health spending has slowed substantially in the last few years, surprising experts and offering some fuel for optimism about the federal government’s long-term fiscal performance. The growth rate mostly slowed as millions of Americans lost insurance coverage along with their jobs. Worried about job security, others may have feared taking time off work for doctor’s visits or surgical procedures, or skipped non-urgent care when money was tight. Is this a good thing?

“As healthcare shifts to a model emphasizing more accountable care, technology will be an indispensable part of the equation, according to a report unveiled this week by the Institute for Health Technology Transformation (iHT2),” writes FierceHealthIT’s Sara Jackson in “Technology key to population health management, ACO maturation.” The report, "Population Health Management: A Roadmap for Provider-based Automation in a New Era of Healthcare," details the ways in which providers must embrace technology, and leverage it for increased efficiencies and improved outcomes.

Who better to discuss “What keeps a hospital CIO up at night” than John Halamka, MD. From old Internet browsers and public facing websites to forensics and third-party desktop software, he lists his “top risks for 2012” in the KevinMD.com blog.

A question that everyone is asking is, “Do I really need this, doc?” MarketWatch’s Kristen Gerencher offers interesting facts and commentary about how asking a few key questions at your next appointment could save you both money and exposure to medical risks. To curb wasteful medical spending and to protect people from potentially dangerous overtreatment, nine medical-specialty societies representing 374,000 physicians recently recommended that doctors “go slow” in some cases instead of reaching for the tools they’ve become accustomed to grabbing right away.

In his article, “GAO: CMS needs better EHR incentive program requirements,” Jeff Byers of CMIO magazine reports that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) EHR incentive programs are currently lacking certain efficiencies to verify that providers meet the designated requirements, according to an April report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

If you didn’t catch it last month in Health Data Management, Deborah Hirsch wrote in HealthTech.com, “Adoption of Electronic Health Records Still Far from Universal” about the chasm between physicians who intend to apply for electronic health records (EHR) meaningful use incentive payments and the ability of their systems to actually comply with the requirements. The study, which was published in Health Affairs, found that 91 percent of almost 4,000 surveyed physicians were eligible for Medicare or Medicaid meaningful use programs, and 51 percent intended to apply.

Health plan executives have kicked healthcare care reform into gear. In this article titled, “Health Plans Ramp up for Healthcare Reform,” Dick Tocknell of HealthLeaders Media spoke with Infosys Public Services, which released survey findings on how health plans are progressing in the implementation of healthcare reform. More than 80% of plans say they are already implementing some type of reform measures or plan to implement them this year. The remainder says they are in the planning stages.

“With the future of the health reform law in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, a majority of hospitals and health systems are anticipating a drop in revenue as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA),” reports Kelsey Brimmer in Healthcare Payer News. The article titled, “Many hospitals anticipate dropped revenue due to ACA,” refers to a survey from healthcare compliance and benefits management firm, HighRoads, and national healthcare compensation consultant, Sullivan Cotter, stating that 55 percent of hospitals anticipate a drop in revenue, 12 percent anticipate an increase in revenue and 28 percent report that they don’t yet know the impact that the ACA will have on revenues. The survey, called "Employee Benefit Practices in Hospitals and Health Systems", was conducted between November 2011 and January 2012.

And you thought the term, “Location! Location! Location!’ was only for real estate. Apparently, it also pertains to Accountable Care Organizations. In his article, “ACO Payments May Hinge More on Geography than Quality,” John Commins of HealthLeaders Media reports on a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that suggests that the shared-savings payments that participating providers receive in the Medicare Pioneer and Shared Savings ACO programs might be more dependent upon geography than performance.

Lucas Mearian at Computerworld weighed in on health information exchanges (HIE) in this piece, “Feds outline plans for electronic exchange of patient information.” In it, he cites Claudia Williams, director of the State HIE Program at the U.S. Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology, who said the public process to establish standards for HIEs will begin "very soon" after the comment period ends for Phase 2 rules for meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs). That comment period ends May 7. The ONC will first publish a request for information, followed by a notice of proposed rule-making and then a final rule.”

Did you know that rising healthcare costs, which have been tracking at two to three times inflation, are making Medicare and Medicaid entitlements financially unsustainable? As a consequence, the U.S. is now spending nearly double what other industrial nations spend on healthcare. As of 2008, American healthcare spending had surpassed $2.3 trillion. And with any burgeoning trend, health reform has introduced an avalanche of new acronyms and buzzwords to the industry, such as MLR (medical loss ratio), Episodic Payment Model and Cadillac Tax. Thomson Reuters has published a new report titled, “Vocabulary of Healthcare Reform,” to help you figure it all out. In addition, Health Data Management offers a nifty slide show and posts the URL of the report.

Tags: ACA, ACO, costs, EHR, FierceHealthIT, Health Data Management, healthcare IT, Healthcare Payer News, Healthcare Reform, HealthLeaders, HIE, iHT2, incentives, John Halamka, KevinMD.com, Marketwatch, NEJM, New York Times, Population Health Management, Reuters, Schwartz MSL, Sharon Begley, Thomson Reuters

By Davida Dinerman on May 7, 2012 9:57 AM Permalink

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The Positive Power of Social Media: Facebook Encourages Organ Donation Awareness

The power of social media has been recognized for quite some time now. And while the positive impact of social media is undeniable, its darker side is often highlighted in media headlines. Cited for encouraging bullying, oversharing personal details and publically humiliating friends, family and even exes—Facebook is often the scapegoat for negative online behavior.

But yesterday that changed, at least temporarily. Facebook launched an initiative to harness social media and social pressure for the betterment of society…to save lives.

Yesterday, Facebook announced that users can now post their organ donation status on their personal Facebook Timeline page. The potential of this initiative is huge. According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, it “has the power to save lives.”

As noted in a New York Times article, the federal government’s Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network states that 114,000 people are waiting for an organ transplant. Last year, only 28,535 transplants were performed, creating a vast divide between those in need and organs harvested for transplant.

But is it a divide that can be easily closed? Can the influence and power of social media be activated to encourage not just the recognition of a decision to donate but also—and equally as important—the conversations in homes, with family members and loved ones, about the decision? This element is critical, as is formal donor registration.

Much like a “single” relationship status on Facebook doesn’t guarantee that someone is actually single, noting your organ donation decision on Facebook doesn’t guarantee your status as an organ donor. You still need to register and legally signify your choice. You can register when you renew your driver’s license or online with Donate Life America.

Is Facebook’s initiative alone enough to eliminate the unmet need for organ donation? Probably not.

Will the initiative create a swell of attention around a critical, life-saving issue, and generate positive peer pressure that can drive awareness like no other vehicle in the world? Absolutely.

Kudos to Facebook for bringing attention to a topic that is too often avoided, for encouraging conversations about how to save lives in the face of death, and for diminishing awkwardness around a difficult topic of discussion.

Regardless of anyone’s very personal decision to register as an organ donor, there is great beauty in harnessing the positive power of social media.

Tags: Facebook, healthcare PR, organ donation, peer pressure, social media

By Stacey Holifield on May 2, 2012 6:47 PM Permalink

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Healthcare IT Trends to Watch, Week of 4/23 - 4/27, 2012

Each day at Schwartz MSL, the Healthcare IT Practice shares news items on the latest industry trends, news, insights and events. Here are the recent highlights from the past week:

When our nation’s health IT chief Farzad Mostashari speaks, it’s usually a good idea to listen. In this article by Diana Manos of Healthcare IT News titled, “Mostashari: 'Keep our eyes on the prize,” he urged the audience at the National Quality Forum to put the patient at the center of care delivery. He emphasized that quality is the cornerstone of what needs to be done. Other issues included “use the market,” “watch out for the little guy,” and “focus on what matters.”

Dan Bowman of FierceHealthIT reported on a new study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation on data use in both patient care and medical research. In the article, “Increased big data access could help lower health costs,” the authors say that all of the nonprofit organizations that study disease should collaborate to build a national health database. Future job-related health benefits packages could provide direction on how employees could contribute their own health information to such a database.

As they prepare to convert to the ICD-10 coding standard, nearly half of providers nationwide are planning to purchase an inpatient computer-assisted coding (CAC) solution within the next two years, according to a new report from KLAS, writes Bernie Monegain of Healthcare IT News, ICD-10 is the major motivator for these providers to look at a CAC solution, as they believe it can make up for some of the lost productivity and reimbursement that ICD-10 will create, researchers state in the report, ‘Computer-Assisted Coding: A Glimpse at the Future of HIM Technology.’

“While a majority of hospital CIOs responding to a recent survey conducted by healthsystemCIO.com say they are participating in regional health or system-to-system information exchange efforts, not all of the respondents have faith in such efforts,” wrote Dan Bowman of FierceHealthIT in his piece “Many hospital CIOs skeptical of HIE efforts.” Overall, 58 percent of the 174 respondents say their organizations are currently participating in regional or system-to-system HIE efforts. And 80 percent said integration with outside providers is a top three priority. About 21 percent say that while they are hopeful, they need to see more results before passing judgment.

Many hospital and health system administrators are expressing doubt about their ability to meet new EHR standards, according to survey results published by KPMG. In Kathleen Roney’s Becker’s Hospital Review article, she reports that seventy-one percent of healthcare business leaders who participated in the KPMG survey said they were more than 50 percent of the way to completing EHR system adoption. However, 39 percent said they were only somewhat confident and 10 percent did not know their readiness level at all in meeting meaningful use Stage 2 requirements.”

We read in FierceEMR’s “AHRQ: EHR use should be increased,” that electronic health records should be adopted by more providers and by a wider range of provider types, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ's) latest health care quality and disparity reports.

Don Fluckinger of Search Health IT wrote, “iPad EHR interoperability progressing as virtualization improves.” He said CIOs increasingly view iPad EHR implementations as a way to promote meaningful use compliance among physicians, who love the device. The increase in iPad EHR use also pushes some facilities closer to joining the BYOD (bring your own device) movement, which brings its own security and compliance challenges.

And here is some perspective straight from the doctors themselves. At the recent conference of the California Academy of Family Physicians, Robert Rowley, MD, had an opportunity to give a talk on various aspects of using health IT in clinical practice. He documented his thoughts in this piece titled, “What Are the Experiences of Family Physicians with Their EHRs?” which appeared in EHR Bloggers. One talk was on “High tech, high touch healthcare,” which focused on methods to avoid having the EHR get in the way of the interpersonal doctor-patient relationship. The other talk was on “Measuring patient engagement.” In the piece, he asked such questions as “Who chooses which EHR to use?” and ”Do physicians love their EHR, hate it, or are they somewhere in the middle?” I don’t think the results are surprising, but EHR vendors should heed their advice.

Tags: Becker's Hospital Review, EHR, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Farzad Mostashari, FierceHealthIT, Healthcare IT, Healthcare IT News, healthcare quality, HIE, ICD-10, KLAS

By Davida Dinerman on April 30, 2012 2:15 PM Permalink

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Differentiate Your HIMSS13 Speaking Proposal

Last month, Schwartz MSL spoke with David Collins, MHA, CPHQ, CPHIMS, FHIMSS, senior director of professional development at HIMSS, to reflect on this year’s event and get a sense for what we might expect next year at “HIMSS Changes Healthcare and the Big Easy” in New Orleans. Since then, HIMSS has opened the call for speaker proposals, which will be available until May 30.

HIMSS’s Annual Conference offers more than 240 general education sessions that are selected from a peer-reviewed process. Last year, HIMSS received 775 speaking proposals, and David expects the same or more for the 2013 conference. Topic examples include health information exchange and interoperability, mobile health, usability and workflow, and enhanced communication between providers and patients (e-connecting with the consumer).

David said that HIMSS will still offer introductory, intermediate and advanced-level presentations, but they have provided cleaner definitions as part of the submission process to make it easier for submitters and ensure they balance information for all three audiences.

How can you differentiate yourself for next year’s selection? David offered three pieces of advice:

Offer an end user case study- HIMSS13 will continue to focus on demonstrating the benefits and ROI of what has been accomplished through a healthcare IT implementation. This means you should offer an end user as the primary speaker. HIMSS is particularly interested in case studies of how health IT is being used to garner clinical and business intelligence to impact care coordination, outcomes improvement, workflow, administrative and cost-efficiencies; increased effectiveness and efficiency in the provision and payment of care; innovation; leadership; and change management.

Get into the right category - In an effort to be as targeted as possible, HIMSS is offering 21 speaking categories, down from 23. They expanded some categories and folded some topics together. Be sure to review the categories and their definitions. If the reviewers understand your category and see a fit, it will give the proposal a better chance of being accepted.

David offered insight into some of the key categories for 2013. “Clinical Business Intelligence” is high on the list. HIMSS has also blended “Financial Information Systems and Business Operations Optimization” together, as well as “EHRs and Enterprise Information Systems”. However, they split up “IT Infrastructure and Architecture” and “IT Standards and Interoperability.”

“Leadership and Governance” has been changed to “Leadership, Governance, Strategic Planning and Clinician Engagement.” There is also a separate category for “Patient Engagement.” Devices used to be its own bucket, but with the emphasis on safety, they found it made sense to combine “Medical Device Integration” with “Patient Safety and Quality.” The category “Patient-centered Initiatives” is appropriate for care coordination, accountable care organizations, pharma/life sciences IT and payer/health plan IT.

Additionally, the Interoperability Showcase will not be on exhibit floor next year, but rather in a separate ballroom among the educational sessions to make them more accessible.

Make your point quickly– You should assume industry knowledge on the part of the reviewers, so save your word count for the meat of the proposal. For example, there is no need to spell out ARRA and define its background. Spend more time on what the proposal will address, as well as the learning objectives and outcomes. If you are offering research and must explain your methodology, that is understandable. Either way, be sure the write-up is not a commercial for a product (even if you offer a customer, reviewers can smell a sales pitch a mile away). Make it timely, relevant, and with a real-world, practical approach.

As to the review process, to ensure a fair assessment, every single proposal is evaluated by a minimum of three volunteer reviewers, who meet throughout the summer to evaluate proposals. The committee then selects initial proposals in early Fall.

Good luck!

Tags: Call for speaker, conference, HIMSS

By Davida Dinerman on April 26, 2012 1:06 PM Permalink

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Healthcare IT Trends to Watch, Week of April 16- 20, 2012

Each day at Schwartz MSL, the Healthcare IT Practice shares news items on the latest industry trends, news, insights and events. There is never a lack of opinion or reporting on such topics as patient engagement, mHealth, ACOs, EHRs, Patient Centered Medical Homes or the latest market stats, and we enjoy learning the differing perspectives of the industry’s influencers in the trades, business press and blog-o-sphere. Here are some recent highlights:

This week, we see articles about the impact of technology on people. Pamela Lewis Donlan wrote a piece in American Medical News titled, “Search is on to cure EHR alert fatigue.” She says that as researchers and health care organizations work to alleviate EHR alert fatigue, it’s clear that the answer is to create systems that take human behavior and supplemental patient data into account when writing rules that decide when and why an alert is fired off.

Ken Terry continues with his patient-centered care article in FierceHealthIT called “Patient-centered care requires more than online technologies.” Within the credo of patient-centered care, patients must be able to obtain copies of their medical records and visit summaries; they should have personal health records that they can share with their providers; they should have patient-centered medical homes; they should share in medical decision making; and, of course, the security and privacy of their personal health information must be rigorously protected.

The annual Thomson Reuters’ Top 100 US Hospitals awards revealed that hospitals listed there have more advanced levels of electronic health record adoption compared with the overall pool of U.S. hospitals, according to a report by HIMSS Analytics.

Rachel Fields at Becker’s ASC Review cited another report by Health Imaging, which states that the percentage of physicians using electronic medical records has doubled over the past two years, according to Doug Fridsma, MD, director of the Office of Standards and Interoperability of the Office of the National Coordinator.

InformationWeek-Healthcare’s Paul Cerrato discussed a recent case report from doctors at Stanford University School of Medicine which illustrates just what disruptive technologies are capable of in his piece, “Clinicians Need Unconventional IT Tools for Toughest Cases.”

Interested in the who’s who of ACOs? Read “60 Accountable Care Organizations to Know” in Becker’s Hospital Review by Molly Gamble. She says that ACOs have proliferated in the past three years, spurred by private payers' interest in coordinated care management and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which introduced the Medicare Shared Savings Program.

Nicole Lewis of InformationWeek- Healthcare reports on a study from CSC Global Institute for Emerging Healthcare Practices called, "Transforming Healthcare through Better Use of Data.” It concludes that during the next five years, healthcare delivery organizations will either gain a competitive advantage or lose ground based on their ability to make the best use of their data.

On the mobile side, Brian Dolan wrote a piece in mobilehealthnews.com titled, “Global mobile health market worth $8B by 2018,” based on a recent report from Global Data, which pegged the global mHealth market as having a $500 million value in 2010 that will top $8 billion by 2018.

And like any other technology, medical devices, such as MRI machines and insulin pumps, are increasingly the victim of hacking, malware and other cybercrimes. A security breach of a medical device can also adversely affect patient safety, as well as the operation of the device, causing it to malfunction, fail outright or alter the data, reports Marla Durben Hirsch in FierceEMR.

Pamela Lewis Dolan also researched meaningful use this week. Her article “More physicians awarded meaningful use money” says that for the first time, physicians and other health professionals received more cash in Medicare meaningful use bonuses than hospitals got in a single month. However, Medicare Payment Advisory Commission data show that the vast majority of physicians have yet to collect a dime of government incentives for their use of electronic health records.

The healthcare IT market today is booming, spurred on by an injection of venture capital funding. PharmaBiz published an article based on a report on funding and mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity for healthcare IT sector for the first quarter of 2012 by Mercom Capital Group, llc. It states that that VC funding in the healthcare IT sector for in Q1 2012 was $184 million in 27 deals, the highest number of deals ever recorded.

If you would like to speak with a Schwartz MSL representation to learn more about how we can help you promote your company in the context of the industry’s news, please contact Doug Russell at healthcareIT@schwartzmsl.com or 781-684-0770.