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Steward Health Care Network, the second largest physician network in Massachusetts, will offer Quartet Health's platform as a service to its providers and their patients. The multi-year agreement expands the partnership between Steward and Quartet Health that started in 2015. Boston-based Steward Health Care, a Next Generation ACO,  is the largest integrated community care organization and hospital network in New England, with more than 17,000 employees in more than 150 communities. [Also: Steward Healthcare: ACO success hinges on IT strength] Former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy joined the board of the New York-based startup last October. Kennedy has been open about his addictions to alcohol and prescription drugs, and he recently wrote about his struggles – and those of his family – in his book, A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction. While serving in Congress, Kennedy authored the Mental Health Parity Act, which required health insurance companies to provide coverage benefits for treatment of mental health conditions that are comparable to coverage provided for physical conditions. Quartet estimates that 7 to 9 percent of Massachusetts residents are treated for both a chronic medical condition and behavioral health condition in a given year. [Also: Legislation seeks to extend meaningful use incentives to behavioral health] Also, an additional 20 percent of this population is either not diagnosed or not treated for behavioral health conditions. As Quartet executives put it, care is often disjointed. Quartet's technology platform identifies individuals in need of behavioral health resources and enables primary care providers to set those individuals on effective treatment paths in tight collaboration with behavioral health professionals. To date, more than 70 percent of Steward providers who used the Quartet platform for the first time became repeat users. Under the expanded agreement with Quartet, all Steward primary care providers will be able to use the Quartet platform and all Steward patients will be able to access free tools and services including online self-care resources, peer support interventions and telepsychiatry. "Access to behavioral health resources is one of the most pressing challenges in primary care today," Steve Stein, MD, said in a statement. Stein is part of Family Medical Associates, a practice within the Steward Health Care Network. Besides Kennedy, Quartet is backed by Annie Lamont from Oak and Carl Byers from Fidelity Bio. Twitter: @HealthITNews

The onset of cloud computing brought with it an information technology revolution, allowing organizations to have their IT resources hosted off site, reducing their costs and simplifying operations. Unfortunately, the move to the cloud did not mean organizations could forget about requirements for a successful security profile. Healthcare organizations making the move to a cloud-centric strategy can’t lower their guard on security defenses, said Chris Bowen, founder and chief privacy and security officer of ClearDATA, a healthcare cloud computing company. “People may think that by offloading security responsibility to the cloud, they won’t have to worry, but that’s not the case,” Bowen said. “We know that threats exist in the cloud.” See all of our HIMSS16 previews Bowen will discuss this issue at HIMSS16 along with J. Gary Seay, senior vice president and CIO of Community Health Systems, Bowen will give a presentation entitled, “Developing a Cloud Security Roadmap." Bowen and Seay will look at the specific security problems facing healthcare organizations, which often rank behind retail and financial organizations in creating hardened, multi-layered approaches. The session will show how to develop a cloud security roadmap that can eliminate the main causes of data breaches using a "Defense in Depth" multi-layered approach to security. The discussion will also look at how a provider enterprise can develop a defense strategy that hardens security at seven distinct layers: physical; network; application; server; data; devices; and users. If done right, cloud technology enables organizations to take advantage of many layers of security, which may range from data encryption to threat management, and drive accelerated compliance, cost savings and data analytics for healthcare organizations. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] Healthcare CIOs evaluating cloud providers as partners have to make sure that their security expertise is airtight, Bowen said. “Just because a cloud provider has a great set of building blocks doesn’t mean they have great solutions,” he said. “Your building blocks will fall if they are not in the right place.” The session will take place on Wednesday, March 2 at 10:00 a.m. in the Sands Convention Center, Palazzo E Ballroom. Twitter: @HealthITNews

Electronic data interchange and in-house transcription are just two of the five emerging health IT applications that will surge in 2016, according to a new report by HIMSS Analytics.

Cyberattacks around the world are growing in size and complexity, according to Arbor Networks 11th Annual Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report, released January 26 by Arbor Networks, the security division of NETSCOUT. For the first time, nearly half of the respondents were from enterprise, government and educational organizations, with service providers at 52 percent. Healthcare is one of the verticals included in the enterprise category. The survey garnered 354 responses, up from 287 received last year, from a mix of Tier 1 and Tier 2/3 service providers, hosting, mobile, enterprise and other types of network operators from around the world. [Also: Understanding the 5 enemies of healthcare IT security] “This report provides broad insight into the issues network operators around the world are grappling with on a daily basis,” Arbor Networks Chief Security Technologist Darren Anstee said in a statement announcing the report. “The findings from this report underscore that technology is only part of the true story since security is a human endeavor and there are skilled adversaries on both sides.” Arbor Networks lists the top five Distributed Denial of Service trends and also the top five advanced threat trends. DDoS usually involves a system infected with a Trojan: malware designed to give unauthorized access to a user’s computer. DDoS trends: Change in attack motivation: This year the top motivation wasn’t hacktivism or vandalism, but ‘criminals demonstrating attack capabilities’ - something typically associated with cyber extortion attempts. Attack size continues to grow: The largest attack reported was 500 Gbps, with others reporting attacks of 450 Gbps, 425 Gbps and 337 Gbps. In 11 years of the Arbor Networks survey, the largest attack size has grown more than 60X. Complex attacks on the rise: 56 percent of respondents reported multi-vector attacks that targeted infrastructure, applications and services simultaneously, up from 42 percent last year. Ninety-three percent reported application-layer DDoS attacks. The most common service targeted by application-layer attacks is now DNS (rather than HTTP). Cloud under attack: Two years ago, 19 percent of respondents saw attacks targeting their cloud-based services. This grew to 29 percent last year and to 33 percent this year. Fifty-one percent of data center operators saw DDoS attacks saturate their Internet connectivity. There was also a sharp increase in data centers seeing outbound attacks from servers within their networks, up to 34 percent from 24 percent last year. Firewalls continue to fail during DDoS attacks: More than half of enterprise respondents reported a firewall failure as a result of a DDoS attack, up from one-third a year ago. Firewalls add to the attack surface and are prone to becoming the first victims of DDoS attacks, as their capacity to track connections is exhausted. Because they are in line, they can also add network latency. Advanced threat trends: Focus on better response: 57 percent of enterprises are looking to deploy solutions to speed the incident response processes. Among service providers, one-third reduced the time taken to discover an advanced persistent threat in their network to under one week, and 52 percent stated their discovery to containment time has dropped to under one month. Better planning: 2015 saw an increase in the proportion of enterprise respondents who had developed formal incident response plans and dedicated at least some resources to respond to such incidents, up from around two-thirds last year to 75 percent this year. Insiders in focus: The proportion of enterprise respondents seeing malicious insiders is up to 17 percent this year (12 percent last year). Nearly 40 percent of all enterprise respondents still do not have tools deployed to monitor BYOD devices on the network. The proportion reporting security incidents relating to BYOD doubled to 13 percent - up from 6 percent last year. Staffing quagmire: There’s been a significant drop in those looking to increase their internal resources to improve incident preparedness and response, down from 46 to 38 percent. Increasing reliance on outside support: Lack of internal resources has led to an increase in the use of managed services and outsourced support, with 50 percent of enterprises having contracted an external organization for incident response. This is 10 percent higher than within service providers. Within service providers, 74 percent reported seeing more demand from customers for managed services. Twitter: @HealthITNews

Many accountable care organizations are still struggling to overcome the challenges associated with health information technology integration, patient management and drug selection to improve care outcomes, according to a new study from the Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute.  In fact, fewer than a third of ACO providers use a single electronic health record system while 59 percent are on multiple systems and find it difficult to streamline and integrate them. Remarkably, PBMI found that 23 percent of ACOs still use paper charts. [Also: Behavioral telehealth key for ACO success.] PBMI surveyed 101 ACO providers, who cover over 30 million patients, specifically to analyze current practices in pharmacy management, the use of pharmacists in ACOs, the state of care management and patient engagement, clinical integration and future goals. The study found most ACOs use support tools in their practices: 90 percent utilize quality reporting tools, and 60 percent use point-of-care decision tools. However, only 34 percent of these respondents found these tools easy to use. "ACOs represent a critical and growing part of the solution to help improve value, quality, and care in our nation's healthcare and pharmacy plays an important role in achieving those goals," Jane Lutz, PBMI executive director, said in a statement. [Also: Steward Healthcare: ACO success hinges on IT strength] Almost all ACOs, 93 percent, said managing population health is very or extremely important, while an even greater majority of 98 percent said their focus on population health will increase in the next three to five years. The role of the pharmacist will be front and center, they said. Additionally, more than 60 percent of respondents said the use of biologics and specialty products and they expect genome testing will increase in the next three to five years [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] But health IT utilization among ACOs needs to increase for these goals to be feasible, the report said. Additionally, the pharmacist's role needs to be more prominent to support management goals to improve adherence, reduce inappropriate utilization and drug selection for better clinical outcomes. But only 57 percent of the ACO respondents currently employ or contract clinical pharmacists. More than half of the respondents said ACOs can decrease the cost of prescription drug therapy and another 69 percent said ACOs can increase the quality of prescription drug therapy. "Pharmacists are underutilized as trusted advisors to patients, physicians and other providers," according to the report. "Their patient-facing role can be very powerful in education and motivation, providing a potential solution to the lack of patient engagement and commitment to self-care." Twitter: @JessiefDavis

Group sends letter to lawmakers urging fixes such as strengthening telehealth reimbursement policies under Medicare.

Company has launched an internal search and is notifying members whose information is on the missing hard drives.

Where does former National Coordinator Farzad Mostashari, MD, spend his time since leaving ONC? Back in the world of clinical issues, practice management, and talking to physicians. Only this time he’s an entrepreneur.

The new software aims to help researchers, molecular pathologists and clinicians work together more easily to improve care.

The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission, the standards development organization and accrediting body for groups that exchange electronic health data, has signed memorandum of understanding with the National Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center to better coordinate their security initiatives.