The week in health IT: 6 significant developments

What started as a relatively quiet week in health IT got a jolt with IBM's announcement that it plans on acquiring Merge Healthcare. That wasn't the only interesting development this week. Here are the six most significant:

• IBM announced that it plans to acquire Merge Healthcare, provider of medical image management systems and other healthcare technologies, in a transaction valued at $1 billion. The move is designed to bolster IBM's Watson Health unit by combining Watson's advanced image analytics and cognitive capabilities with Merge’s image management platform.
• Initial public offerings in health IT this year have grown more than five-fold compared with the investment levels of 2007, according to a report from Healthcare Growth Partners. The number of public health IT companies year-to-date as of July 1 is 36—an 89 percent increase from the 19 public companies in fiscal year 2007. The total enterprise value of those companies grew 606 percent, from $12.4 billion in FY 2007 to $87.3 billion YTD July 1.
• The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the final rule for the inpatient prospective payment system for fiscal year 2016, which includes a requirement for hospitals to report four out of 28 clinical quality measurers electronically during calendar year 2016 in order to receive payment in the FY 2018 Inpatient Quality Reporting program. That's a drop from 16 out of the 28 measures over two quarters originally proposed.
• The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an alert to users of a computerized infusion pump that communicates with hospital information systems via a wired or wireless connection over facility network infrastructures. The pump has serious cybersecurity vulnerabilities that could put patient safety at risk. The FDA has strongly encouraged acute and non-acute healthcare facilities, such as nursing homes and outpatient care centers, currently using the Hospira Symbiq Infusion System, to discontinue use of these pumps and find alternative infusion systems as soon as possible.
• Hospitals’ efforts to reduce readmissions within 30 days of discharge aren’t going very well, according to the latest numbers from CMS. Only 799 out of more than 3,400 hospitals—24 percent—subject to the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program performed well enough on the CMS' 30-day readmission program to face no penalty. Meanwhile, 38 hospitals will be subject to the maximum 3 percent reduction.
• Almost one-quarter of physician practices that responded to the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange's most recent ICD-10 readiness survey will not be ready for the Oct. 1 transition to ICD-10 and another one-quarter said they are unsure if they will be ready. In response, the organization suggested to the Department of Health and Human Services that they fill the Ombudsman role as soon as possible and provide full transparency regarding each state's Medicaid agencies' readiness.

-Beth Walsh

Editor
Clinical Innovation + Technology