April 1, 2008 | A new study shows a solid majority of doctors — 59 percent — now support national health insurance, reflecting a shift in thinking over the past five years among U.S. physicians. Such plans typically involve a single, federally administered social insurance fund that that guarantees health care coverage for everyone, much like Medicare currently does for seniors. The plans typically eliminate or substantially reduce the role of private insurance companies in the health care financing system, but still allow patients to go the doctors of their choice. A study published in Annals of Internal Medicine, a leading medical journal, reports that a survey conducted last year of 2,193 physicians across the United States showed 59 percent of them "support government legislation to establish national health insurance," while 32 percent oppose it and 9 percent are neutral.
Executive Roundup
StatCom announced that Michael Holland will lead StatCom’s sales team as it launches a targeted sales and marketing program. Holland has a history of managing and driving successful sales teams at established health care solution providers such as Siemens and Lawson.
MedPoint Communications, a leading provider of communications and eMedia services to the biopharmaceutical industry, has named Pamela Ring vice president and senior director of account management. Ring is responsible for overseeing and managing the company’s diverse communication, e-meeting and medical education services for clients such as Abbott, GlaxoSmithKline, and Pfizer.
Ian Reinecke, the founding CEO of the National E-Health Transition Authority (Australia) has announced his decision to leave NEHTA. Reinecke was responsible for establishing NEHTA as a company in 2005 and the subsequent development of a work program that now involves more than 150 staff working on a range of complex eHealth projects. He will leave NEHTA on Friday 4 April 2008 to resume his career as a consultant and corporate adviser.
Scott Wallace, National Alliance for Health Information Technology president and chief executive since 2003, has stepped down. Alliance Board Chairman Curt Selquist, retired chairman Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems, is serving as interim CEO. The move comes in conjunction with an announcement that the Alliance has launched a process to explore new ways to make further contributions to the health care field in light of the significant developments in health information technology (HIT) since the group’s founding in 2002.
Welch Healthcare & Retirement Group of Norwell, Mass., has deployed the Referral Management System Enterprise Edition, a product of Patient Placement Systems, marking the first use of dedicated online referral management for centralized admissions in the continuing care industry. The Referral Management System online long-term care software automates referral communications and processes across the central Welch admissions office and six of the Welch Group's rehabilitation and nursing centers. This allows Welch admissions directors, coordinators and liaisons to receive, review, distribute, track, and approve referrals by viewing documents securely online to quickly make convenient and appropriate placements within Welch Healthcare's network of nursing centers.
McKesson Corporation has acquired Rosebud Solutions, a provider of software solutions to track and manage instruments, endoscopes, and tissue implants for surgical services, as well as medical crash carts and mobile equipment. The Rosebud Solutions portfolio is designed to create efficient and responsible workflow processes in the surgical, central services and sterile processing departments to help hospitals improve patient care, reduce surgical delays and costs, and save staff time.
Caritas Christi Health Care System (CCHCS) has selected McKesson’s Horizon Cardiology cardiovascular information system (CVIS). CCHCS will extend its integrated enterprise-wide imaging strategy by implementing McKesson’s complete, single database system supporting medical imaging and reporting capabilities for cath (including hemodynamics), echo, and electrocardiograms (ECG) into all six of its hospitals. CCHCS is Massachusetts’ second largest integrated delivery network and annually performs more than 8,000 catheterizations and interventions, 6,000 vascular studies, 22,000 echocardiograms and 95,000 ECGs.
McKesson Provider Technologies and The Clorox Company have announced a strategic relationship focused on helping customers enhance patient safety. Clorox and McKesson together will develop and promote disinfection protocols for mobile equipment and handheld electronic devices. These devices — which include computers on wheels, tablet PCs, mobile medication cabinets, and hand-held bar-code scanners for medication administration, specimen tracking, and blood verification — are commonly used by clinicians in and between patient rooms. McKesson will team with Clorox to offer jointly developed disinfection protocols in conjunction with McKesson’s Patient Care Advantage solution.
Agfa HealthCare will be showing the newest version of IMPAX, the advanced workflow that integrates RIS/PACS/Reporting information and image management into one workflow, at SIIM 2008, May 15-18 in Seattle. IMPAX has been redesigned with a clinical information page, including fast access to clinical data during the image review; embedded reporting tools for more productive voice-enabled communication with ED and dictation solutions; and IMPAX SmartSeek, a context-driven URL-based query model to support information searches.
MediNotes Corporation announced their partnership with Akamai Practice Management, LLC, a practice management and reimbursement service provider for independent physicians in Hawaii. Additionally, MediNotes and Akamai have become fully participating members in the Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA) Initiative for Innovation and Quality (HI-IQ), which provides assistance to physicians looking to acquire EHR systems.
Dell and Kardia Health Systems are teaming up to streamline the delivery and management of cardiology care through an innovative combination of technologies. The Kardia echocardiography information management system enables time and cost savings by reducing or eliminating data entry, managing the scheduling of patients, lab personnel and equipment, and through automated report generation. With tens of millions of echocardiograms performed annually in the U.S., the potential efficiencies and savings are significant. The Kardia solution is combined with Dell infrastructure and services to deliver a robust and easy-to-use Web-based system. Originally developed by echocardiography professionals at Mayo Clinic, the Kardia echo lab management solution streamlines all echo workflow processes — from patient scheduling through assignment of responsible health care personnel, to logical template-guided entry of echo study information. Dell has designed a system to run the Kardia solution and will manage the implementation of the technology, selecting servers, storage and desktop computers based on the size of the cardiology practice. A Dell PowerEdge 1900 or 2900 will be deployed for smaller practices that don’t have a data center or IT staff, while larger practices would run on Dell PowerEdge 1950 III and PowerEdge 2950 III with storage on PowerVault MD 3000s. The system will include image review stations running on an OptiPlex 755. Dell will provide help desk and maintenance support services for all technology.