Industry Insight

New Internet Portal Launched to Help Providers
With Value-Based Purchasing

Panacea Healthcare Solutions, the company that introduced websites to help providers with the federal government's recovery audit contractor program (racmonitor.com) and ICD-10 implementation (icd10monitor.com), recently launched a new website, VBPmonitor.com.

Value-based purchasing (VBP) initiatives continue to increase in both government and private sectors, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recently announced an initiative to increase the percentage of Medicare payments that are linked to quality and value to 85% by 2016 and 90% by 2018. This shift represents a major change for America's health care system as VBP affects all providers, vendors, and care settings.

"The transition from fee-for-service to value-based purchasing represents the most significant change in health care and we see our role as helping to bring together providers, associations, vendors, and payers for the betterment of health care in America not only through the transition but beyond 2015 with Internet broadcasts, white papers, special bulletins, and e-news featuring in-depth articles that address every department and setting in health care—from acute care hospitals to physicians to rehabilitation hospitals and hospice and more," says Kim Charland, publisher for VBPmonitor and cohost of ICD10monitor's Talk-Ten-Tuesday weekly Internet broadcast show.

The VBPmonitor.com website not only features articles written for the many different VBP initiatives, but will also feature VBPUniversity.com that will produce educational webcasts and offer reports and e-books.

— Source: Panacea Healthcare Solutions, Inc

H.I.M. ON CALL Adds New Location and Employees

H.I.M. ON CALL, a technology and outsourced services company for HIM, coding, clinical documentation improvement (CDI), and revenue cycle, has announced the expansion of its second location in Piscataway, New Jersey. The additional office strengthens the company’s presence in the New York metropolitan and entire tri-state area.

“H.I.M. ON CALL was founded in the New York metropolitan area and has slowly spread out to encompass hospitals throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the surrounding states,” says Joe Gurrieri, RHIA, CHP, vice president of HIM services. The company is committed to growing where they have been planted by bolstering resources to deliver hands-on, focused support to customers during ICD-10 crunch time and the critical cash-flow months following ICD-10’s October 1, 2015, go-live.

Along with the new office location, H.I.M. ON CALL increased their existing client service offerings with six new coding, technology, HIM, and CDI experts. Additional experts at the company now include the following:

• Michelle Black, RHIA, joined H.I.M. ON CALL as director of coding, data quality, and education. Black has more than 20 years of experience in both the HIM and HIT professions. Prior to joining H.I.M. ON CALL, she was the manager of HIM at Southern Ocean Medical Center, part of Meridian Health.
• David Gonzalez, RHIA, directs client services and implementations. Gonzalez has more than 22 years of experience working in HIM with specific expertise in complex project management, system implementations, and vendor negotiations.
• Cassie Milligan, RHIT, CCS, manager of quality improvement, joined H.I.M. ON CALL with more than 30 years of hands-on encoder and EMR experience. Milligan previously held many positions in various acute care hospitals within the tri-state area. She was instrumental in the implementation of a CDI program with Meridian Health Systems, while managing a full clinical coding platform conversion.

— Source: H.I.M. ON CALL

CommonWell Health Alliance Welcomes Executive Director

CommonWell Health Alliance (the Alliance) recently announced its first-ever executive director, Jitin Asnaani. In its search for the founding executive director, the board sought a candidate who could build on the current CommonWell momentum in nationwide data exchange.

“Jitin has been instrumental in the CommonWell Health Alliance since its founding,” says Rod O’Reilly, President of McKesson Health Solutions. “In addition, his leadership on both the National HIT Standards and Policy Committees, his strategic mindset, and his ability to execute while collaborating with a wide array of stakeholders makes him the perfect executive director for the Alliance at this critical juncture.”

Asnaani comes to the Alliance with experience in both the public and private sector—equipping him with the tools and knowledge to effectively collaborate with government, vendors, providers, and other interoperability stakeholders across the care continuum. His diverse work history includes product innovation and interoperability at athenahealth, technical standards development at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), product management at a HIT startup, and strategy consulting at Deloitte.

Most recently, Jitin created athenahealth’s Technology Standards and Policy program, which drives and advocates for increased HIT interoperability and, more importantly, real-world interoperation. He led corporate involvement in strategic interoperability initiatives, including Federal Advisory Committees, the Alliance, the Argonaut Project, and DirectTrust.org.

Following the passage of the HITECH Act, Asnaani was appointed to the ONC, where he launched and led the Standards and Interoperability (S&I) Framework to crowd-source technical standards for health information exchange. He grew the S&I Framework to more than 350 participating private and public sector organizations, and developed several standards that went on to be incorporated into national meaningful use criteria, including Direct Project, Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture, and Laboratory Results Interface.

“I’m honored to work with members whose commitment to ‘interoperability in action’ has already produced working real-world services that are being deployed throughout the country,” says Asnaani, who has been active in the Alliance since its inception at HIMSS 2013. “My priority is to keep that momentum going so that interoperability can contribute to improved delivery and outcomes, sooner rather than later.”

Asnaani will lead CommonWell as the organization extends the availability of its services nationwide. CommonWell has more than doubled its membership over the last year, and its 20 members represent roughly 50% of the acute care EHR market and 20% of the ambulatory care EHR market, as well as market leaders and innovators in laboratory, retail pharmacy, and long term care. To date, more than 26,000 unique persons have consented to enroll in CommonWell’s network. “And we’re just getting started,” Asnaani says.