The following infographic from Staff.com is interesting, outlining IT Jobs with the highest pay and fastest growth. Though it’s not specific to health IT jobs, it it worth a look to see how the IT job market is moving. As is expcted, mobile app development is the hottest market sector now and there are not enough folks to fill them.
Median salary for a IT staffer is about $90,000.
Cloud is the fastest growing sector with nearly two million jobs worldwide going unfilled in 2012. More than 65 percent of all enterprise organizations expected to add some sort of cloud service as of then and the numbers are likely increasing.
Finally, if you’re in IT for the money, work your way into management – about $110,000 annual salary – or a developer with an average annual salary of about $95,000.
Also, want to see how you compare to other IT workers around the world: There a nice graphic below outlining the salary disaparity globally. Think the US pays the most? You’d be bloody wrong! No even the top two, mate.
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives released the following statement in support of embracing federal interoperability plans:
The federal government’s top health IT advisers recently made recommendations on how public and private stakeholders should progress toward interoperability in healthcare. Leaders from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and Health Level Seven International (HL7) embraced the recommendations of the JASON Task Force, calling them a significant step forward in achieving the promise of information technology in healthcare. CHIME and HL7 also highlighted the need to incorporate critical enhancements to standards currently under development for meaningful use Stage 3.
During a joint meeting of the Health IT Standards and Health IT Policy Committees, federal officials discussed new details regarding a national interoperability roadmap and outlined concrete recommendations meant to improve the appropriate access and use of health data. The JASON Task Force said that a solid foundation for interoperability should utilize public APIs, advance modern communications standards, such as HL7’s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), and use meaningful use Stage 3 as a pivot point to initiate this transition.
FHIR is a simple-to-use format that can improve interoperability for a range of technologies, including EHRs, patient-centric solutions and mobile applications. A next generation standards framework created by HL7, FHIR combines the best features of HL7’s Version 2, Version 3 and CDA product lines while leveraging the latest web standards and applying a tight focus on implementability.
“Today’s discussion and the recommendations of the JASON Task Force represent an evolution in thinking,” said CHIME president and CEO Russell P. Branzell, FCHIME, CHCIO. “The updated roadmap and the recommendations put forth by the JASON Task Force incorporate a tremendous amount of stakeholder input and articulate the challenges facing our industry much more completely than previous efforts.”
“The prioritization of standards-based interoperability and a commitment to long-term policymaking will enable healthcare to benefit from information technology in very tangible ways,” said Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD CEO of HL7.
CHIME and HL7 believe important recommendations were accepted by the full Health IT Standards and Health IT Policy Committees. HL7 and CHIME also support allowing time to make meaningful use Stage 3 more impactful with the inclusion of key standards that are still under development. “There remains a disconnect between artificial government timelines and the realities of standards and technology development,” Branzell said. “This highlights a principle concern with how health IT policy is created, adopted and implemented at the federal level.”
CHIME and HL7 are committed to collaboration in the advancement of health IT initiatives such as FHIR and support government efforts on the interoperability roadmap.
CHIME is an executive organization dedicated to serving chief information officers and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 1,400 CIO members and more than 140 healthcare IT vendors and professional services firms, CHIME provides an interactive environment enabling senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate; exchange best practices; address professional development needs; and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and healthcare in the communities they serve.
MeriTalk, a public-private partnership focused on improving the outcomes of health and government IT, announces the results of its new study, “FutureCare: Cloud, Big Data, Mobile, and Social Optimize the EMR.” The report, sponsored by EMC Corporation, explores how FutureCare-enabling technologies — cloud, big data, mobile and social — are driving profound change and how deployment of these tools can help optimize electronic health records for improved patient care coordination.
The report purports to reveal that while many providers have implemented or plan to implement these technologies in the next two years, 96 percent of healthcare organizations say their infrastructure is not fully prepared for the evolution of their EHR today.
Health IT leaders have started to adopt FutureCare technologies. Two-thirds of healthcare providers run EHR applications in the cloud, with the majority currently using private cloud models (49 percent), followed by hybrid and public clouds (35 percent).
Healthcare providers are also using big data and analytics in conjunction with their EHR with 50 percent saying big data is helping them to reduce re-admissions and track and evaluate patient outcomes more effectively. Providers are also using big data to conduct cost/benefit analysis to reduce project risk (46 percent), manage clinical and IT staffing levels (38 percent) and prescribe preventive care (24 percent).
Mercom Capital Group, a global communications and consulting firm, releases a new report depicting VC funding and mergers and acquisitions activity in the healthcare IT third quarter 2014. According to the report, venture capital funding in the sector came to $956 million raised in 212 deals globally, a decline of 46 percent in terms of dollars compared to the massive $1.8 billion in 161 deals raised in Q2 2014, a rare quarter. Q3 2014 was still the second highest quarter for VC funding since 2010, though, and total VC funding year-to-date is $3.6 billion.
The quarter was dominated by more than 100 funding deals of less than $2 million. There were 252 investors that participated in the quarter including angels, VCs, private equity and corporate VCs. The quarter also included 12 accelerators/incubators.
“Healthcare IT saw another big fundraising quarter in Q3 with almost $1 billion raised. Companies from countries outside of the United States, accounted for a record 21 percent share of the funding. While consumer-centric companies attracted the majority of the funding this quarter, M&A has been a different story with the majority of the deals involving practice-focused companies,” said Raj Prabhu, CEO and co-founder of Mercom Capital Group.
Consumer-focused technologies received 65 percent of all VC investments, with $623 million in 140 deals compared to $678 million in 100 deals in Q2 2014. Areas that received the most funding under this category were mobile health with $345 million in 82 deals followed by telehealth, which had its best quarter, with $101 million in 16 deals; personal health with $85 million in 24 deals; social with $70 million in three deals; and scheduling, rating and shopping with $23 million in 15 deals.
Practice-centric companies received $333 million in 72 deals in the third quarter of 2014, compared to $1.1 billion in 61 deals in Q2. Under this category, the areas that received the most funding were revenue cycle management with $75 million in eight deals, and data analytics with $71 million in 19 deals.
The top five VC funding deals in Q3 2014 were the $70 million raise by DXY (Ting Ting Group), an online healthcare community for medical institutions and healthcare providers in China, from Tencent Holdings Limited, a provider of comprehensive internet services in China, followed by the $52 million raise by Proteus Digital Health, a developer of products and services integrating medicines with ingestible sensors, wearable sensors, mobile and cloud computing.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announces the availability of a new initiative for Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program. The new ACO Investment Model is designed to bring these efforts to to rural and underserved areas by providing up to $114 million in upfront investments to up to 75 ACOs across the country.
The ACO Investment Model will give Medicare Accountable Care Organizations more flexibility in setting quality and financial goals, while giving them greater accountability for delivering quality care efficiently, said CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner.
“We are working with these organizations to make necessary investments that encourage doctors, hospitals and other health care providers to work together to better coordinate care and keep people healthy,” Tavennaer said.
Through its Innovation Center, CMS will provide up front investments in infrastructure and redesigned care process to help eligible ACOs continue to provide higher quality care. This will help increase the number of beneficiaries – regardless of geographic location – that can benefit from lower costs and improved health care through Medicare ACOs.
Guest post by Tom S. Lee, Ph.D., CEO & Founder, SA Ignite.
If the few years since the onset of meaningful use haven’t been proof enough, the speed and unpredictability of regulatory change in the last five months has cemented our field’s status as truly not-for-the-feint-of-heart.
Yesteryear’s glacial rate of change in healthcare IT regulation is nowhere to be seen. May 2014 brought both a CMS reset of the ICD-10 transition deadline to October 1, 2015, and a proposed meaningful use rule to enable the use of 2011 edition certified EHR technology (CEHRT) to meet compliance in 2014. The summer then ended with the August 29th finalization of the 2014 meaningful use final rule, the ensuing disappointment that the mandated start of Stage 2 was not delayed and then the swift Congressional response in the form of the September 15th proposed Flex-IT Act to introduce quarterly meaningful use reporting for 2015; enough to spin heads more than once around.
What’s happened in the field since the publication of the final rule among provider organizations bring the phrase “threading the needle” to mind. To further illustrate, we have culled some sample issues from our client base of more than 8,000 providers, across more than 15 EHR brands, and representing numerous combinations of meaningful use stage, payment year and program. These issues, none of which yet have universal and clean solutions, span three areas for provider organizations as seen in the field: 1) properly adhering to the requirements of the final rule, 2) working within the constraints of what EHR vendors can deliver per the final rule’s timeline, and 3) redirecting or pausing organizational momentum for change on short notice.
Regarding the first consideration, note that the final rule requires that an organization attest that it is “not able to fully implement” 2014 Edition technology because of “delays in 2014 Edition CEHRT availability.” Although the rule outlines what does not meet this eligibility test, provider organizations have a persistent question about what documentation and conditions are sufficient to satisfy the test.
Wellframe delivers a mobile experience featuring a secure two-way communication channel to connect patients with care providers. The company also offers a mobile data collection system that is, cloud-hosted and scalable to any number of users. Wellframe’s artificial intelligence engine for health state modeling, prediction and dynamic clinical protocol optimization uses data from a patient’s interaction with the care plans to optimize the system, and the company has developed a lightweight cloud-hosted care management EHR that has been successfully integrated into clinical workflows.
Elevator pitch
Wellframe’s mobile platform for care management and patient engagement extends therapeutic relationships to promote patient adherence and improve financial outcomes for health plans and systems.
Product/service description
Wellframe enables organizations to extend the reach of their existing care management services, while providing a higher quality of care to members and improving patient outcomes. Wellframe’s intelligent system engages high-risk patients and creates a personalized patient experience, which is delivered in a simple daily health check-list via mobile technology.
Wellframe has demonstrated success working with the health system’s most socially and medically complex —and costly— patients. These are the individuals for whom payers and providers most desperately need additional insights. The insights gleaned from the Wellframe platform enable clinicians and care managers to better manage their patients’ health and keep them engaged in their care. Wellframe amplifies rather than replaces therapeutic relationships and is re-engineering an antiquated market by using mobile technology to put a care manager in every patient’s pocket.
Founders’ story
The Wellframe founding team is comprised of individuals with a diverse set of skills and whose backgrounds include clinical medicine, public health, systems engineering, data science and consumer engagement. By leveraging their different areas of expertise, the founding team was able to identify a gap in the way care is delivered in the US.
The CEO, Jacob Sattelmair, who is an epidemiologist by training, was focused on using technology to engage people around managing their own health. The chief medical officer, Dr. Trishan Panch, who is a primary care physician and a lecturer at MIT, had been focused on using technology to reengineer care delivery and lower cost settings. Vinnie Ramesh and Archit Bhise are both MIT-trained computer scientists who were researching new ways to utilize low cost technology to improve access to healthcare.
Utilizing and merging their diverse backgrounds, the team developed the idea behind Wellframe: An effective solution to re-engineer care delivery.
The Affordable Care Act supports healthcare providers in reducing costs and improving efficiency while delivering quality care. Accountable care organizations (ACOs) achieve these goals by enabling physicians, hospitals and other healthcare providers to create networks and share responsibility to deliver care to Medicare and other patients.
At the heart of the ACO model are three core principles:
ACOs are provider-led organizations with a strong primary care base, and collective responsibility for quality and per capita costs.
ACO payments are linked to improvements in quality that also reduce costs.
Performance measures that support improvement are sophisticated and reliable, and demonstrate that savings are achieved through improvements in care.
Joining an ACO is voluntary, but the federal government encourages participation to reduce unnecessary or duplicated services, prevent errors and keep patients healthier. When providers successfully coordinate services to meet a long list of quality measures, they become eligible for bonuses.
The Current Environmment
Medicare offers several ACO programs, including the Medicare Shared Savings Program, the Advance Payment ACO Model and the Pioneer ACO Model, but many other public and private models exist. Some are sponsored by physicians groups, while nonprofit organizations, hospital systems and health insurers sponsor others. The Pioneer Model was designed for early adopters of coordinated care, and is no longer accepting new members.
To date, more than 600 public and private ACOs have formed; in 2012, the first year of the program, they generated $87.6 million in gross savings. Government support is spurring considerable growth, and ACOs could well become the dominant model in healthcare.
