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The consultant, which proposes moving away from evaluating physicians independently to a methodology in which physicians are evaluated in clusters, will share insights at HIMSS16.

Canadian and U.S. researchers formed a collaborative to explore social media in public health, with plans to generate a practice roadmap. The endpoint: enabling public health entities to harness social media to better help deliver effective intervention strategies. “This trend is an emerging phenomenon that the healthcare industry needs to grasp and couple with the IT infrastructure in place to fully engage individuals in managing their health,” said Susan McBride, a professor at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Nursing. “Public health organizations in both Canada and the United States are using multiple tools in social media programs to intervene on targeted efforts. All of this will further inform the roadmap for use of social media in population and community health.” McBride has more than 25 years of experience in clinical, informatics and outcomes management capacities. McBride’s research focus is on healthcare informatics, analytic methods using large datasets, patient safety and quality. See all of our HIMSS16 previews She will be co-presenting at HIMSS16 with Richard Booth, RN, PhD, an assistant professor at the Western University Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing in Ontario. These executives will deliver the findings of their latest research during a session titled “Building a Road Map for Social Media in Public Health.” “We are hoping to consolidate some of the current knowledge of social media used in population and public health,” Booth said. While the world has become increasingly networked, government and healthcare have only now begun to realize the importance and value of communication that can be afforded by social media and related styles of communication, Booth added. “I view topics like social media as a new generation or asymmetric way that health IT is growing and evolving. The type of health IT largely driven by consumers – we as healthcare providers and informaticians are late to the game in many respects,” Booth explained. “Unlike traditional clinical or health IT, this type of technology allows for immediate two-way communication with service recipients; thus, it can’t be controlled or managed like traditional health IT.” [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] Because social media is so dynamic, the potential for its use in healthcare is very exciting, Booth added. And while the term ‘social media’ may fade in terms of its relevancy and usage, the communication modality offered by social media will become infused into the everyday way of doing things, including delivering healthcare, he said. “Consumers of the not-too-distant future will be increasingly wanting to discuss and collaborate with each other as much as with their clinicians,” Booth said. “Social media – though not in its exact, current form – will offer us insights into what types of communication patterns might be possible moving into the future. We have a lot of work ahead of us.” The session, “Building a Road Map for Social Media in Public Health,” is slated for Friday, March 4, 2016, at the Sands Expo Convention Center in Galileo 1004. Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT 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.

Wen Dombrowski, MD, has been in the field of clinical informatics since the 1990’s. Back then, her work involved building diabetes databases for community health centers. Today, she’s a geriatrics physician executive at Resonate Health, a role that sees her combining technology, social media, and business solutions to help patients with complex conditions. Dombrowski is also one of only a fistful of social media influencers to sit in the top slot of the #HIT100 list. [Also: Steve Sisko: 'Healthcare literacy' surge coming soon] We reached out to Dombrowski ahead of HIMSS16 to discuss what she’s hoping to find at this year’s conference, what trends she expects to see taking hold in 2016, and what she sees as the untold benefit of social media for healthcare. Q: What’s something about you that even your devout followers likely don’t know?  A: My early days in Clinical Informatics were in the 1990's building diabetes registry Access databases for community health centers in inner-city of Chicago. As part of an IHI (Institute for Healthcare Improvement) Diabetes Learning Collaborative, I learned to track key clinical measures and use the data to identify and reach out to patients with gaps in care. Q: One health IT prediction for 2016? A: In 2016 we will see more direct-to-consumer telemedicine and other digital health services. Mainly because consumers are increasingly demanding easy-access user experience of healthcare, and also because technologies are maturing while state and federal payment policies are starting to cover telehealth. I really like this recent quote: "The digital strategy of a healthcare organization must be aligned with everyday consumer experiences in other industries," from @dchou1107. Q: What is the untold benefit of social media in healthcare today? A: Social media is not only an information-sharing tool — it catalyzes online and local conversations about what are the problems and potential solutions in healthcare. While social media is rich in content for anyone to learn about a diverse array of topics, the online interactions between individuals can be encouraging, thought provoking, and motivating people to action. See all of our HIMSS16 previews Q: What are you most looking forward to learning about at HIMSS16? A: I am looking forward to reconnecting with my Health IT colleagues from around the country and brainstorm how to accelerate healthcare innovation so that patients can truly get the best care. At the HIMSS16 conference I am planning to participate in the sessions related to Physician Informaticists, Long Term & Post Acute Care Providers, Women in Health IT, and HX360 Innovation Leaders.  Q: What inspired you to apply for the Social Media Ambassador program? A: I am already active in using social media to promote awareness of the benefits and challenges of using technology to improve health and care. I helped plan the #HIMSS16 Physician IT Symposium, so I was already planning to be at HIMSS sharing about the latest ideas and discussions happening there. Twitter: @SullyHIT 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.

(SPONSORED) As the outcomes of healthcare reform become clear, it is equally clear that healthcare executives need to objectively analyze internal systems and processes, such as information technology and care delivery, to determine how they will effectively adapt to a new reality.

As the industry moves toward data-driven medicine clinicians are going to need more decision support tools than in the past. "Medicine has always strived to be data driven," said Gaurav Singal, MD, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and director of the Innovations Unit of Foundation Medicine. “But now there's a shift happening between what we call data and what we call evidence.” Although healthcare won't get to a point that a patient is 100 percent unique, Singal said, historic information is crucial to ensuring providers aren't flying blind. See all of our HIMSS16 previews "I don’t think randomized control trials are going to be less effective," he said. "But in an evidence-based world, it won't be the whole picture. Random isn't enough … patients are just too precisely defined and unique." Singal leads technology and data-centric product development at Foundation Medicine. He helped launch its Interactive Cancer Explorer, otherwise known as ICE, a physician-facing clinical decision support and patient management platform that uses data collection and aggregation to aid physicians with clinical decision-making. He said it's these types of Web-based technologies and digital innovations that can improve therapeutic decision making at the point-of-care. In his talk titled, “Precision Medicine in the Information Age,”  Singal will discuss how physicians and insurers are embracing actionable molecular information to positively impact care delivery. Singal's work at Foundation Medicine is focused on molecular oncology, using genomic information to produce and analyze tumors or genomes where the cancer has mutated. These molecular characteristics of tumors can actually guide cancer treatments. His work in both medicinal and engineering fields creates a unique duality in his perspective, he said. He's always looking for ways to combine health and technology with data-centric solutions that are clinically relevant to impact both patients and providers. Singal’s team designs and builds tools for physicians to determine the best course of action for their patient. They built ICE with this goal in mind, to connect with doctors from a scientific standpoint to see what works and what doesn't. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] It's no longer about generic treatments for these patients but, instead, about treating patients based on their molecular data to offer more precise care. "Providers have been interested in clinical decision support for a long time," Singal said. "I think there's a cultural shift happening, with the data that drives these decisions. And more doctors are seeing this shift." Singal’s session, “Precision Medicine in the Information Age,” is scheduled for March 2 from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. in the Sands Expo Convention Center Sands Showroom. 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.

Agile development, once the domain of software developers, is being put to work at Intermountain Healthcare, as CIO Marc Probst and his team are rapidly building programs throughout clinical settings. “We are rolling it out and configuring it within the entire organization,” Probst said. “We’re applying it not just to software development but as an integration within the organization.” See all of our HIMSS16 previews The agile method -- in which requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing teams -- promises to deliver programs much more quickly and better meet the needs of healthcare providers. Probst and Jeff Townsend, executive vice president at Cerner, have been collaborating on just such an approach. And the two will present in a session on March 2 at HIMSS16 titled “What IT Takes to Succeed.” “With traditional IT approaches, you make a selection for a piece of software – for example a departmental imaging system – and you hand it to IT to implement,” Townsend said. “In the agile model, we start not as software-centric but as workflow-centric. We include process judgements, with short cycle times and we initiate prototypes and empower leaders to participate. So there is a continuous ‘show me’ element.”  Cerner, Intermountain and 400 Intermountain physicians collaborated in 2015 to apply agile development principles to design and configure an electronic health record, practice management and revenue cycle system at two Intermountain hospitals and 24 clinics across northern Utah. Teams used agile development principles to design and configure the system in six-week cycles. Probst and Townsend will outline how to recognize challenges of agile development and how to overcome them. They will also show how to identify the tools needed to implement data-driven, agile cultures within other parts of the organization. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] Townsend said the new agile development approach is changing how organizations operate.  “This isn’t the CIO picking the system out,” he explained. “It’s the clinical and business leadership putting it into the organization – which is incredibly more powerful.” Their session, “What IT Takes to Succeed,” is scheduled for March 2 from 1 – 2 p.m. in the Sands Expo Convention Center Sands Showroom. 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.

The vast majority of Americans say they would welcome using technology and mobile devices to monitor their health, according to a recent study by the Society for Participatory Medicine, a nonprofit membership organization focused on patient engagement. The study found 84 percent of survey respondents felt tracking blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, physical activity and other data with a user-friendly mobile device between provider visits would help to better manage their health. [Also: Remote patient monitoring market booming amid readmission fines] "The important findings from the survey show patients really want to partner with physicians," said Daniel Z. Sands, MD, co-founder, co-chair of the Society for Participatory Medicine. "It's not a typical service industry, like the car wash model of healthcare where the patient cruises through the system," he added. "Providers need to engage patients, and patients want it." In fact, 77 percent of survey respondents felt it was both important for themselves and their healthcare provider. ORC International interviewed more than 1,000 Americans on behalf of the Society for Participatory Medicine and found 76 percent of respondents would use a clinically accurate and easy-to-use monitoring device; 81 percent would be more likely to use a device if their provider recommended it, and 57 percent would like to use the device and share the information with their provider. "I think many physicians believe patients just want to come in for their visits, but don't really want to engage in their healthcare," said Sands. "The participatory method is really important, but the question is, do physicians want to have a partnership?" "If we get it right, we have the opportunity to leverage technology to help patients contribute to their health information without coming into the office," he added. "This information is valuable to patients and to providers. It's an important tool to get healthcare outside of the office." According to Sands, it's a change in mindset for many providers that medical schools are attempting to combat. But it's challenging in the constraints of a medical practice to transition to this type of care. Further research must be done on physicians to determine their issues and thoughts. Twitter: @JessiefDavis

Two employees of Jackson Memorial Hospital have been fired for accessing and leaking the medical records of New York Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul after the football star lost part of his hand in a July 4, 2015 fireworks accident. The hospital, in its statement, said it had chosen not to comment earlier due to litigation surrounding the incident that has since been settled. [Also: Hospital draws HIPAA heat after NFL medical record tweet] "As part of our investigation into the breach, it was discovered that two employees inappropriately accessed the patient's health record. That finding resulted in the termination of both employees,” officials said in the statement.  “Protecting the privacy of our patients is a top priority at Jackson Health System. Any time we have allegations of a breach, we immediately and thoroughly investigate." Pierre-Paul’s medical records were reportedly leaked to an ESPN reporter in July, who then posted a portion of the player's info on Twitter. The record showed that Pierre-Paul had his right finger amputated after the July 4 fireworks accident. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] HIPAA laws only apply to healthcare providers, which means the ESPN reporter did not violate HIPAA in posting the leaked record on Twitter. However, the reporter’s ethical judgment was heavily debated after he posted Pierre-Paul’s protected patient data. Pierre-Paul missed much of the 2015 NFL season due to the injury. He has since returned and plays with a protective glove over his injured hand. Twitter: @HealthITNews

WellSpan Surgery and Rehabilitation Hospital is the latest health organization to earn a Stage 7 Award from HIMSS Analytics. The achievement represents the York, Pennsylvania-based hospital’s attainment of the highest level on the Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model, whose eight stages measure a facility's prowess in implementing and using information technology. Only 4.1 percent of the more than 5,400 hospitals in the U.S. have reached Stage 7, which requires a complete EMR environment with continuity of care transactions, and data continuity with the ED, ambulatory sites and more. [Also: Stage 7 success stories] WellSpan Health, which serves the communities of central Pennsylvania and northern Maryland, is an an integrated health system with more than 850 physicians and advanced practice clinicians, a home care organization, six hospitals and more than than 140 patient care locations. John H. Daniels, global vice president in the healthcare advisory services group, of HIMSS Analytics, said a couple things stood out during a validation site visit to WellSpan Health – notably, strong operational and governance support of its overall electronic health record strategy and a commitment to clinical leadership in its IT projects. "This approach was evident in the case studies they presented that showed significant benefits realization in improved outcomes and cost savings," Daniels said in a statement [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] R. Hal Baker, MD, senior vice president of clinical improvement and chief information officer at WellSpan, said the hospital "was built around leveraging the electronic medical record," and pointed to effective the integration of biomedical devices as one of its biggest achievements. WellSpan Surgery and Rehabilitation Hospital will be recognized at the 2016 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition, which takes place Feb. 29, through March 4, at the  Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas. Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN 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.

Patient care teams at Yale-New Haven Hospital, looking for a faster, more efficient and more secure way to communicate with each other in the emergency room, have adopted smartphone applications to speed up workflows. The changeover from stilted clinician communications and responsiveness as a result of the hospital’s emergency room reconstruction. At certain times, different areas of the department would be closed creating confusion and making it difficult to locate personnel. In addition, the way the pediatric emergency department was logistically set up, the clinicians working there had no line of sight, making it hard for them to communicate with one another. [Also: Intermountain deploys ReadyPoint for audit compliance] Eventually, the hospital bucked its traditional methods, which included a public address system and a VOIP wireless phone system, turned to MH-CURE – for Clinical Urgent Response – a smartphone application from Waltham, Massachusetts-based Mobile Heartbeat. MH-CURE offers care teams secure, single smartphone access to all clinical communications, pertinent patient information and lab data. Care team members have a choice of using their own smartphone or sharing hospital-supplied devices. It consolidates clinical communications, including alarms and notifications, pertinent patient information, lab data, texting, voice and photography. Allen Hsiao, chief medical information officer and associate professor of pediatrics and of emergency medicine at Yale-New Haven, said adoption was easy and the staff realized early the power of having everyone on one platform. [Also: OhioHealth taps Epic's MyChart Bedside] "We choose the ED because it's as a self-contained a unit as you're going to find in a hospital," said Hsiao. "We certainly have the dynamic need of trying to find the right nurse, the right physician, at the right time, they are often in different rooms out of sight." So far, he said, the impact has been positive. "We're saving a lot of time. We used to play phone tag, used to get interrupted taking care of patients, having to step out to take a call or answering an overhead page. It's giving us back time with the patient at the bedside." Hsiao said that if a doctor or nurse gets a text, they can glance at it very quickly without leaving the patient and they can decide whether or not they need to step away or if it can wait and continue to do what they were doing with the patient. In addition, their train of thought and conversation with the patient is not interrupted. "Unlike a traditional text message I can see if another physician or nurse has read my text or not – they can tell if I read it or if it’s been delivered and not read yet," he said. "That helps a great deal. Then I know if they haven't read it and it's urgent, I can escalate with a phone call." Hsiao said that with traditional text or pager you have no way of knowing if the receiving person read a text or not. For example, if a lab sends critical lab alerts, instead of playing phone tag the alert is automated – so when something is critical, needs intervention right away, as soon as the result is back the text gets triggered right to a smartphone. Hsiao said the effect on patient care has been positive. "It cuts down on the delays between awareness of information and actual treatment." Hsiao said adoption has been driven by the flexibility of the platform, such as the ability to use an Android or iPhone device, and integration with the electronic health record. "All these features add to the functionality and the importance of the technology so it becomes a secure HIPAA-compliant ecosystem for clinical tools, that is the wave of the future," he said. According to a Mobile Heartbeat, an outside consulting firm conducted a study, before and after the MH-CURE implementation, to determine how long it took for the clinicians in the emergency departments to communicate with one another. Results revealed that the amount of time required for clinicians to locate and transmit information to one another was greatly reduced, allowing staff to spend more time with patients and thus provide better patient care. In a poll of clinicians, 75 percent said they now found it easy or very easy to communicate with colleagues with MH-Cure; just 24 percent felt that way prior to using it. Nearly 75 percent, meanwhile, reported that MH-CURE has improved patient workflow and patient safety. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] James Webb, vice president of strategic accounts for Mobile Heartbeat, said that the market for this smartphone technology is growing because secure texting is a major driver. "What we're seeing at MobileHeart beat is that people do not want to lock in to just a secure text solution, they want a full communications package, clinical workflows and inputs and alerts from various systems in the hospital," said Webb. "We see a lot of sites looking at their mobility strategy and really the major thing for their apps is they have to be able to play well together." Hsiao said that in addition to the adult and pediatric ED the smartphone app is now being deployed in its medical and surgical departments – and recently in intensive care units and emergency departments – at all of Yale's other hospital campuses, including the main campus in New Haven. Twitter: @HealthITNews