Becker's Hospital Review

34 CIO / HEALTH IT Defense Department boosts Cerner contract by $1.1B By Julie Spitzer T he U.S. Department of Defense is plan- ning to increase its health records con- tract with Cerner by $1.1 billion, offi- cials said July 24, according to Nextgov. e deal, facilitated by Leidos, is valued at $4.3 billion, with a total contract lifecycle price of $9 billion. As part of the increased project budget, the Pentagon will include the Coast Guard in the project, Stacy Cummings, program executive officer for Defense Healthcare Management Systems, told Nextgov. In May, the Veterans Affairs Department awarded Cerner a 10-year, $10 billion deal to overhaul its legacy records system and put it on the same platform as the Defense Depart- ment, but its contract included features that weren't in the Defense Department's deal. e revised agreement would resolve those differ- ences, according to Ms. Cummings. "A standard electronic health record baseline for the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs and U.S. Coast Guard will enable more efficient, highly reliable, safe and quality care," she told the publication. e announcement comes nearly two months aer the Defense Department's Op- erational Test and Evaluation office found the agency's first three implementations of the EHR failed to "demonstrate enough workable functionality to manage and docu- ment patient care" and had "poor system us- ability, insufficient training and inadequate help desk support." e report called the EHR, dubbed MHS Genesis, "neither operationally effective nor operationally suitable," and caused the agency to cancel plans to test at a fourth site. at report came aer the Pentagon paused its rollout in January because officials re- ceived more than 14,000 help tickets and early tests found the EHR could only per- form about 56 percent of the 197 tasks used to measure the system's performance. How- ever, as of July 13, the EHR is running at the four pilot sites. VA said its transition will follow a wave mod- el — similar to the Defense Department's plan — with the first go-lives slated for July at Washington state facilities in Spokane, Seattle and American Lake. Implementation is set for October, and the agency plans to be fully func- tional at the three test sites by March 2020. e next four locations making up the second wave of the Defense's MHS Genesis deploy- ment are Naval Air Station Lemoore, Travis Air Force Base, U.S. Army Health Clinic Pre- sidio of Monterey in California and Moun- tain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, according to Ms. Cummings. n OCR issuing fewer HIPAA penalties in 2018, report suggests By Jessica Kim Cohen T he HHS Office for Civil Rights is on track to impose sig- nificantly fewer HIPAA settlement fines in 2018 than the agency has in previous years, according to a report from the law firm Gibson Dunn. The July 26 report is a mid-year review of healthcare enforce- ment actions, including decisions by HHS, CMS, OCR and the Justice Department. Since HIPAA privacy rules took effect in 2003, OCR has re- viewed and resolved more than 180,000 complaints related to the legislation. In 2017, the civil rights office issued 10 pen- alties totaling $19.4 million, and in 2016, the office issued 13 penalties totaling $23.5 million. As of July, OCR has reported only two HIPAA penalties in 2018, along with one decision from an HHS administrative law judge. The three decisions amount to an estimated $7.9 mil- lion in fines. Gibson Dunn noted it's unclear whether the downtick in HI- PAA enforcement actions during the first half of 2018 signals a shift in priorities, or whether the civil rights office intends to pursue more settlements in the second half of the year. However, if OCR continues at this pace throughout the re- mainder of 2018, the year will mark a "dramatic decline in HI- PAA enforcement actions," the report said. n Apple is hiring for its new health clinics By Julie Spitzer A C Wellness, Apple's group of concierge health and wellness clinics for its Bay Area employees, hired more than 40 people, CNBC reported Aug. 2. AC Wellness operates as a separate subsidiary of Apple. People familiar with the business say Sumbul Desai, MD, the former executive director of the Stanford (Calif.) Med- icine Center for Digital Health, is leading the initiative. Most of new hires are healthcare providers — primarily wellness professionals such as nutritionists, exercise spe- cialists and nurse practitioners — and technologists, most of whom have joined AC Wellness within the last three months, according to CNBC. AC Wellness also snagged several employees from Crossover Health, which operat- ed clinics in the Bay Area before moving to other locations. The business also tapped several "care navigators," peo- ple with experience directing patients to the most ap- propriate care. Among the physicians AC Wellness has hired are former Stanford community physician Darren Phelan, MD, and former Crossover physician, Nitun Verma, MD, who spe- cializes in sleep. Many of AC Wellness' new hires hail from health tech startups, which CNBC notes might suggest it will focus on virtual medicine and smartphone consultations. n

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