This Week’s Health IT Business News

The health IT business week ended on a big note. Late Thursday afternoon the long awaited HIPAA Omnibus Bill was released. The Bill brings sweeping changes to the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules since first implemented, enhancing patient’s privacy protections and strengthens government ability to enforce the law. The Bill will impact EHR vendors, service provider and more as Business Associates are now directly liable in a number of areas. Read EHR implementation and HIPAA expert Carolyn Hartley’s Highlights of HIPAA Privacy and Security Omnibus Bill.

Mergers, Acquisitions and Investment

Alliance Healthcare Solutions and Final Support have merged to form Quatris Health. The merger makes Quatris the largest reseller of the GE Centricity EHR software. “GE Healthcare looks forward to continuing to work closely with Quatris as this combined organization extends its reach to grow the Centricity business,” said Jack Salerno, general manager, commercial channels, GE Healthcare IT.

A month ago Allscripts announced that  CEO Glen Tullman was stepping down and former Cerner COO Paul Black would take over the reins for the EHR giant. The move was made on the heels of much speculation Allscripts was looking for a buyer. Earlier this week the company announced it will report on fourth quarter and full 2012  financial results on a webcast scheduled for February 19, 2013 at 4:30 Eastern. Those of you interested in hearing what Allscripts management and new leadership have to say about earnings can join in. You can log onto the webcast of the call 15 minutes before it starts on the Allscripts website or call 1-877-303-0543, access code #87002646.

Product Development

Step right up to Stage 2. Greenway Medical announced this week its Greenway PrimeSUITE 2014 (17.0) software product is compliant with ONC 2014 Edition, more commonly known as Stage 2. The module product was certified by CCHIT. “We believe this certification puts Greenway at the forefront of EHR companies helping providers achieve Meaningful Use Stage 2,” said Tee Green, Greenway president and chief executive officer in the press release issued. “Just as Stage 1 helped drive innovation, Stage 2 incentives will spur even greater EHR adoption and support for the growing initiatives of coordinated care, consumerism and the evolution towards true value-based medicine in the United States. Greenway plans to achieve Complete EHR certification as soon as possible.”

Speaking of certification, M*Modal announced it has formalized a certification program for EHR vendors and other healthcare systems for integration of the M*Model speech recognition and natural language understanding. The M*Modal Partner Certification Program is free to vendors. In the company press release issued, Matt Jenkins, M*Modal Senior Vice President of Corporate Business Development said “Speech-enabling EHRs drives greater physician adoption and satisfaction with their EHR investments. Physicians can now have both the ease of using speech to capture the patient story while gaining all the benefits from creating structured data and storing it in the EHR.”

CTG Health Solutions, a health information technology (IT) consulting firm in and a business unit of CTG announced an ICD-10 testing service to help healthcare systems, hospitals payers in compliance with the new coding system. CTG Health will be exhibiting at HIMSS13, booth 3663.

Henry Schein MicroMD has announced a series of new enhancements to to its practice management and EHR software products. The solutions include new patient communications, electronic patient payments, and HIPAA-compliant data backup and monitoring. Read more about these enhancements in the company’s press release.

Partnerships and Contracts

New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) announced it will partner with Health 2.0 to launch a patient portal design challenge. The Patient Portal for New Yorkers Design Challenge offers $25,000 in prizes. Designers and developers are invited to submit prototypes for a statewide patient portal for New Yorkers. Deadline for submissions is April 11, 2013. Once all of the submissions are received the New York public will be invited to vote on their favorite designs from April 11-21.

HealthEast Care System (HealthEast), a non-profit health care organization with four hospitals and 14 primary care clinics, has chosen RelayHealth for enterprise HIE (health information exchange). RelayHealth was acquired by McKesson in 2006.

Personnel

The American Health Information and Management Association (AHIMA) announced the election of its new board members including Kathleen Frawley, a professor and chair of DeVry University’s health IT program, as newly elected president and chair.