News

Experts says cybercriminals favor these types of attacks because they are reasonably easy to pull off and have a big impact. 

(SPONSORED) This synopsis of the 2015 Protected Health Information Data Breach Report provides an analysis overview of confirmed Protected Health Information (PHI) breaches involving more than 392 million records and 1,931 incidents across 25 countries.

OpenNotes is emerging as one of the most promising applications in the national movement toward more effectively engaging patients with a range of technologies including EHRs, mobile software, telehealth tools. And it is proving especially useful in the data liberation revolution.  “Medical care is very expensive and the information in medical records should belong to the patients,” said Homer Chin, MD, the physician champion for the Northwest OpenNotes Consortium. “This opens the record up for them and gives them access to their own information. So it’s really about greater transparency of the healthcare system.” The Northwest OpenNotes Consortium is a group working to implement Open Notes across all health systems in Oregon and the Portland Metro region. See all of our HIMSS16 previews Initial studies of OpenNotes usage have shown that patients felt more engaged in their care and that they were more likely to take medicine as prescribed, Chin said. Seventy-five percent reported taking better care of themselves, better understanding of their medical conditions, and were better prepared for visits. They felt more in control of their care and said that availability of OpenNotes would affect their future choice of providers. “They felt closer to their providers and more engaged with their medical care with the ability to see these notes,” Chin said.  Another potential benefit of OpenNotes is its promise to make medical care more efficient and less expensive. “Our gut sense is it probably will but that remains to be seen because we don’t have the hard data,” Chin said. “If people are on the same page, they won’t be reordering tests, won’t be redoing things. The patient will be more engaged and will understand what’s going on to a greater extent. But data hasn’t been gathered yet.” [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] Early concerns about OpenNotes from physicians about it taking up more time for doctors and patients were allayed with use of the technology. “In our experience, when organizations go live with OpenNotes the predominant thing we hear from physicians is it was a non-event,” Chin said. “When the functionality was implemented, hardly anything was heard from the patients and doctors. In general, after implementing OpenNotes, physicians turned out to be very supportive and found it to be very helpful.”  Chin’s session, "OpenNotes and the Northwest OpenNotes Consortium," is slated for Tuesday March 1, 2016 from 10 to 11 a.m. in the Sands Expo Convention Center room Lando 4201. Twitter: @HealthITNews This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

Dell's chief medical officer says baby boomers have great expectations about how health IT can work to their advantage.

To help information technology departments succeed at driving new projects, it takes viewing the IT team as partners, not roadblocks. That’s the aim at Illinois-based Advocate Health Care, said Rance Clouser, the system’s vice president of IT field services. Clouser, who leads unified communications and collaboration across the 12 hospitals and 250 care sites included in Advocate's campus, is also in charge of corporate support services, reporting and analytics.  See all of our HIMSS16 previews During a HIMSS16 presentation, "Competing IT Priorities? Master Your Enterprise IT Demand," Clouser will discuss how Advocate achieved better outcomes on initiatives from social, mobile, analytics and cloud techniques, as well as infrastructure. Clouser said that when projects are approached or denied, it's easy to paint IT as the bad guy, but business leadership should be making the big decisions and ensuring the IT department is heard. His team has interviewed many organizations in the healthcare space and recognized Advocate wasn't alone in the need for portfolio management and interoperability. When integrating processes over multiple institutions within one organization, it takes a lot of effort to get things just right. "Apparently, I was pretty naïve when we started out, and I thought it could be done quickly," Clouser said. "Don't underestimate the effort." Advocate’s leadership has allowed its separate sites to remain independent, Clouser said, and that independence in turn enables the communities to tailor their services to the needs of their region and demographic. But the individuality causes troubles with interoperability — an issue Advocate is currently trying to remedy. "We've developed a system, fully in place to work with the business end, upfront, to make sure we're moving toward standardization and consolidation at each site," he added. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] Due to Advocate's size, and the independence of the individual sites, Clouser said, it was imperative to meet with all staff members to learn the culture and needs. Communication is also crucial to ensuring a successful implementation. "Communicate early, often and repeatedly,” Clouser said. “Because it just takes so long for a larger organization to adopt new processes." The session “Competing IT Priorities? Master Your Enterprise IT Demand,” is slated to take place March 1, 2016, from 4 to 5 p.m. in Palazzo B at the Sands Expo Convention Center. Twitter: @JessiefDavis This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

Hospital workers resort to handwritten notes and faxes after hackers demand $3.4 million in Bitcoin from the hospital in a ransomware attack.

IT support is emerging as a key factor in hospital satisfaction and many trends will shape these relationships, report says.

Collaboration with Greater Flint Health Coalition hopes to improve health IT infrastructure, analytics, long-term care coordination goals in the area.

Only a few days remain to submit speaker and session proposals for the Healthcare IT News and HIMSS Big Data & Healthcare Analytics Forum, which will be held in San Francisco June 14 and 15.

Lantern, a San Francisco-based startup, with 17 employees, is working with UPMC Enterprises, the commercialization arm of the Pittsburgh-based healthcare giant, to further develop the company’s online mental health wellness services and products. The startup, founded in 2012, recently closed on a $17 million investment led by UPMC Enterprises on February 10. All other previous investors, including Mayfield Fund, SoftTech Venture Capital and Stanford University, joined the round. [Also: 3 recent health IT IPOs to watch] UPMC, one of the largest integrated healthcare delivery systems in the country, is the ideal partner, Alejandro Foung, Lantern co-founder and CEO, said in a statement announcing the new funding. "A large part of UPMC's appeal, Foung added, is its "focus on disease prevention – a sharp contrast to the fee-for-service model that currently dominates the behavioral health landscape." "This is for us about a very long-term bid on how we can use technology to engage consumers and patients in their mental health, said Mark Stabingas, executive vice president at UPMC Enterprises. "There’s an acute shortage of mental health professionals," he said. "There are lots of people who could benefit from mental health services." UPMC clinicians will work with Lantern on two pilots aimed at expanding Lantern’s programs to address additional behavioral health issues and potentially to address populations of patients with more complex conditions, Stabingas said. As taken as the UPMC team is with the products, the Lantern team has built to date, Stabingas said, "We are compelled first and foremost by the team. We are as much focused on the idea that we can partner with the team to build something really compelling for the long haul that has the opportunity to help millions and millions of patients." [Also: Steward ACO picks Patrick Kennedy-backed Quartet] Among the companies, UPMC has backed is Evolent, a public company that offers a mix of consulting and technology. Its cloud-based IT, which includes population health and analytics tools, is built to help hospitals and health systems migrate from a fee-for-service system to value-based care. Another behavioral health IT company recently in the news is Quartet, which is backed by Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy who serves on the board of the New York-based startup. Twitter: @HealthITNews