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For
the
most current ABL Healthcare Online
and access to ABL.org, go to
http://www.abl.org/new/html/resources_news_hc.asp
-- Click on Titles Below to Go to Each News Item --
Vantage Announces Major National Expansion
Skip Davis Named Leader of New Providence Division
Steve Brown Joins Mohr Davidow Ventures
Silverado Fulfills Senior's Dream
PCG Fights Healthcare Claims Fraud & Abuse
LifeMasters
Launches Health-Specific Online Communities
IntelliDOT Secures Agreement with MedAssets
IBM Signs $1.4 Billion Deal with AstraZeneca
HeartMath Honored with First-Ever Award
Dynamic's
Solution Chosen by OSF Health Plans
DWT Details Proposed Changes to Stark
CMS Medicare Demonstration Achieves Strong Success
Avail's Faller "Stars" in New Ad
AT&T Provides Networking Services to John Muir
Aperio's New Release Focuses on Tissue Microarrays
Allegory Presents Communications Training for Women
AIM Discusses Latest IT for
Diagnostic Imaging Management
Abraxis and Biocon Agree to Licensing Deal
75% of U.S. Adults Will be Overweight by 2015
California Docs Using IT Score Higher on Quality
Google & Microsoft Seek to Impact Healthcare Sector
Hospitals to Report Consumer Satisfaction Data
California Launches New Public Health Department
MEMBER RESOURCES: TALENT WANTED
International Marketing Executive Seeks Opportunity
>>
HeartMath & Quantum Intech Announce
Career Opportunities
>>
Vantage Announces Major National Expansion
Vantage Oncology,
Inc., where Mike Fiore is CEO, recently completed an equity
financing worth $22.5 million, formed six new partnerships comprising
eight cancer centers in four new markets, and opened two new centers in
an existing market. Vantage now operates 22 centers with its physician
and hospital partners in nine regional markets located in 10 states.
Skip Davis Named Leader of New Providence Division
Skip Davis, CEO of
Providence Health Care in Eastern Washington since 1998, has been
named chief executive of Providence Strategic Ventures, a new division
of Providence Health & Services, where he'll be responsible for
expanding existing affiliations and joint ventures and identifying new
opportunities. Skip will remain in his current position through the end
of 2007.
Steve Brown Joins Mohr Davidow
Ventures
Steve Brown, Chairman of Health Hero Network and a 2006 ABBY Award
Winner, has joined Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV), a leading Silicon
Valley venture capital firm, as an Entrepreneur in Residence.
"I am excited to work with MDV because they recognize the opportunity for
disruptive new ideas to transform major sectors of the world economy in
healthcare, energy, and information technology," Steve said. "Advances in social
media, wireless sensors, and virtual environments can lead to powerful
new business models and new incentives for people to manage health and
change behavior."
Silverado Fulfills Senior's Dream
Silverado Senior Living, where Loren Shook is CEO, was featured
recently on the front page of the Salt Lake City Tribune for
granting one of its 85-year-old hospice patients his greatest wish
-- to fly over the Uinta Mountains "with my sweetheart one more time."
Click here for full story.
PCG Fights Healthcare Claims Fraud
& Abuse
Andria Jacobs, COO of PCG Software, has written an article,
published in Managed Healthcare Executive, entitled "Challenge
facing payers is to reduce prevalence of healthcare fraud," which
addresses the need to augment existing claims adjudication systems with
enhanced editing software that monitors the internal claims process, as
well as cost containment solutions.
Click here for complete article.
LifeMasters Launches Health-Specific Online
Communities
LifeMasters Supported SelfCare, Inc., where Chris Selecky is CEO,
has teamed with Harvard Health Publications and Gather.com to launch the
“Living With…"
series, featuring 35 health-specific online communities, which provide
members with unprecedented access to original content and interaction
with physicians from Harvard Medical School, along with peer-to-peer
support.
IntelliDOT Secures Agreement with MedAssets
IntelliDOT Corporation, where Tom Klopack is CEO, has signed a
multi-year agreement to provide optimized pricing
for its handheld bar code patient safety technology, the CAREt System,
to MedAssets Supply Chain Systems’ customers nationwide.
Also, IntelliDOT announced
the successful facility-wide implementation of the CAREt Bedside
Medication Administration System at 214-bed Yakima Regional Medical
Center in Washington state.
IBM Signs $1.4 Billion Deal with AstraZeneca
IBM, where Bill Craddock is a senior executive,
has signed a $1.4 billion, seven-year global strategic outsourcing
agreement with AstraZeneca, covering the provision of IT
infrastructure services to 60 countries. IBM will
manage IT services
for AstraZeneca, including server and
storage hosting, service desks, PC management, network and
communications services, and computer operations
support.
HeartMath Honored with First-Ever Award
HeartMath, where Bruce Cryer is CEO, has received the first
American Institute of Stress Award for Distinction and Innovation for
its handheld
emWave Personal Stress Reliever.
The device
is "unusually effective for reducing stress, anxiety and improving performance," says Paul J. Rosch, MD, President of the American Institute of Stress. “HeartMath has established
themselves as a leader in the scientific community through their years of solid scientific research and in-depth
understanding of stress and the physiology of emotions."
Dynamic's
Solution Chosen by OSF Health Plans
Dynamic Healthcare
Systems, where Ken Stockman is CEO, has announced that OSF
Health Plans, Inc., a managed care company with 100,000 members,
purchased its HCC Analytics solution, which is designed to improve the accuracy
of HCC information for Medicare Advantage Plans. It will allow OSF to manage its risk adjustment scores and improve the accuracy
of risk adjusted submissions by capturing mis-coded ICD-9 codes.
DWT
Details Proposed Changes to Stark
Davis Wright Tremaine, where Gerry Hinkley is a Partner,
has published an Advisory Bulletin entitled "CMS Proposes Changes to
the Stark Regulations in the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Rule."
Specific arrangements affected by the proposed changes include shared
lab and imaging facilities, per click leasing arrangements, percentage
compensation provisions, and under arrangements services contracts.
Click here for complete Advisory.
CMS Medicare Demonstration Achieves
Strong Success
CMS, where Jeff Flick is Regional Administrator and Dave Sayen is
Associate Regional Administrator, announced that all participating
physician groups improved the clinical management of diabetes patients
in the first year of the three-year Medicare Physician Group Practice Demonstration,
which rewards providers for coordinating and managing the
overall healthcare needs of Medicare patients with chronic conditions.
All 10 of the participating physician groups achieved benchmark
performance on at least seven of the 10 diabetes clinical quality
measures; two physician groups met all ten benchmarks.
Avail's Faller "Stars" in New Ad
Avail Medical
Products is running a new ad prominently featuring senior exec
Chris Faller>>
AT&T Provides Networking Services to John Muir
AT&T Inc., where Judi
Manis heads the Healthcare Market Group, has announced a new
contract with John Muir Health to serve as the primary networking services
provider, delivering AT&T OPT-E-MAN service to connect one
of John Muir's more remote locations to the main data center in Walnut
Creek. The fully managed, switched Ethernet network service will also
support doctors and healthcare practitioners from any location
throughout the network.
Aperio's New Release Focuses on Tissue Microarrays
Aperio Technologies, Inc.,
where Dirk Soenksen is CEO, has
launched TMALab II, the latest release of its web-based
digital pathology information management system, built specifically for
researchers who use Tissue Microarrays. TMALab II enables researchers to
analyze and manage hundreds of small tissue samples simultaneously in a
meaningful way.
Allegory
Presents Training for Women
Allegory Training,
where Christina Harbridge-Law is President, is offering
"Communicating to be Heard and Remembered," a training session for women
only.
Click here for more information.
AIM Discusses Latest IT for Diagnostic
Imaging Management
American Imaging Management, where
David Soffa, MD, is a senior executive, contributed an editorial
entitled “Creating Shared Value in Imaging" for the most recent online version of
Executive Healthcare Management magazine. It discusses the
opportunities to leverage developments in healthcare information
technology to achieve better quality in diagnostic imaging management.
Click here to read the editorial.
Abraxis and Biocon Agree to Licensing
Deal
Abraxis BioScience, Inc., where Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD, is CEO,
and Biocon Limited, a biotech company in India, have agreed that Abraxis
will license the right to develop a biosimilar version of G-CSF
(granulocyte-colony stimulating factor) in North America and the
European Union. G-CSF encourages bone marrow to produce more
white blood cells, and is primarily used for the
treatment of neutropenia, the lowering of white blood cells that
fight infections.
Many Motives
Behind Single Payer
Every cause needs a spokesman. With "Sicko," Michael
Moore's generating the press for promoting a single-payer
system, a la England's National Health System. But behind his
flock, there's an unlikely alliance of other supporters of the
concept, including unionized businesses: A recent
California HealthCare Foundation report asserts that unionized
employers are now spending 14.5% of their payroll for
healthcare benefits, compared to non-unionized companies, who
are paying 10.4%. Organizations with rich retirement
benefits: These include local, state and federal
governments, as well as GM, which tacks an extra $1,000 on
every Tundra to pay for their retirees' healthcare.
Unionized workers: Like the Arizona-based Safeway checker
I recently walked a 5K with who hasn't had a raise in eight
years (while her healthcare benefits have "remained the
same"). And the growing number of insured Americans who
either have been - or know someone who's been -
retrospectively declined for coverage they thought they
had, only to find a "hole" in their policy. Even Fortune
Magazine is nodding to the left as it proclaimed next to a
cover photo of Hillary Clinton on its July 9th issue: "Who
business is betting on." Will Hillary be betting on the
electorate becoming a part of Moore's single-payer alliance?
Stay tuned.
75% of U.S. Adults Will be Overweight by 2015
Obesity prevalence has increased at a rate of 0.3-0.8%
annually in the U.S. over the past three decades, from 13% in
the 1960s to 32% in 2004. Authors of a Johns Hopkins School of
Public Health study predict that, at that rate, 75% of adults
and 24% of children will be overweight or obese by 2015. (www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/)
California Docs Using IT Score Higher on Quality
The more
California physician groups use information technology to
support patient management and care, the better they scored on
clinical quality measures, according to a report from the
Integrated Healthcare Association. The 40,000 physicians in
220 physician groups participating in the pay-for-performance
program, the largest in the nation, continued to improve in
clinical quality, patient experience and use of IT, according
to the fourth annual report. The physician groups meeting all
criteria for IT had clinical scores 18% higher than those
groups that did not meet any of the IT criteria. (Health IT
Strategist, 7/25/07)
Google & Microsoft Seek to Impact Healthcare Sector
Google's recent investment in genetic profiling company
23andMe and Microsoft's
purchase of intelligent medical search company
Medstory could lead to
"highly disruptive" healthcare services. Aware that many
internet searches are health related, the two web giants are
attempting to build a presence in the healthcare sector. (KenRadio's
Daily Tech News Clicks, 7/11/07)
Hospitals to Report Consumer Satisfaction Data
Beginning this month, hospitals subject to the inpatient
prospective-payment-system provisions are required to submit
data from a standardized survey of their adult patients to
receive their full annual payment update from CMS for fiscal
2008. Beginning in March 2008, the data culled from these
patient surveys will be posted publicly on the Hospital
Compare Web site. Hospitals that choose not to submit and
publicly report the data may receive an update that is 2
percentage points lower than their peers. The Consumer
Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems hospital survey
(HCAHPS) is the standardized survey hospitals must use to
report their patient-experience data to CMS. California
hospitals are already getting a taste of HCAHPS
accountability. Some 209 hospitals representing about 70% of
the states' admissions have volunteered to submit data on
quality, safety and patient experience that incorporate the
HCAHPS survey with other clinical quality measures.
(Modern Healthcare.com, 7/25/07)
California Launches New Public Health Department
California's Department of Health Services has been split into
two separate entities: The Department of Health Care Services
will administer Medi-Cal and other programs designed to
deliver clinical care to individuals and families.
Sandra
Shewry heads this new agency, with a proposed 2007-08 budget
of $38 billion. Meanwhile,
the
Department of Public Health, with a proposed budget of $3
billion, will absorb such key areas as disease surveillance,
environmental health, health promotion, prevention of chronic
diseases and infectious disease control activities. Dr. Mark
Horton is its first director.
(California Healthline, 7/25/07)
7/27 -
Membership-wide Social at Bower's Museum: Treasures from
Shanghai, Gems!, and Mummies
8/1 - Orange County Round Table: "Sicko" Private Screening
8/9 - Northern California Round Table
8/15 - Life Sciences
Round Table
8/17 - Los Angeles Round Table
For
the
most current ABL Healthcare Online and access to ABL.org, go to
http://www.abl.org/new/html/resources_news_hc.asp