Bernie Monegain

The health system’s CEO said it is creating an innovation arm to improve the patient experience as well as post-acute and behavioral health services.

A new survey of more than 1,500 women revealed that they frequently encounter obstacles that impact salary and career advancement, according to Women Who Code. Seventy five percent of jobs in the U.S. will require technology skills within the next decade, according to Women Who Code CEO Alaina Percival. “It’s imperative that the industry as a whole become a more welcoming and inclusive place for women who have been drastically underrepresented to date,” Percival said in a statement. “Providing women every available opportunity and resource to succeed is crucial – both for their well being and for the stability of the economy.” Highlighting challenges women face once they enter technology careers, the study also looked at what needs to be done to attract women to technology fields in the first place. Nearly 80 percent of women indicated flexible work hours as critical, and one in four respondents said flexible work hours was the most important factor when considering a career in tech. Half of all respondents, in fact, agreed that balancing their career and personal life is challenging. Women Who Code, a global nonprofit dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers, conducted the research with developer training company Pluralsight. When asked to rank the biggest challenges in their careers, respondents listed lack of opportunities for advancement first, followed closely by lack of female role models and lack of mentorship at work. More than 60 percent of female leaders agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that having more women on their teams would be beneficial. Respondents also cited a lack of confidence and male-dominated work environments as top issues holding back their careers. And while 20 percent of respondents in their 20s and 30s aspire to a vice president or C-level position, more than 50 percent felt uncomfortable asking for a raise and nearly 50 percent felt uncomfortable asking for a promotion. What’s more, women in leadership roles reported being held back by male-dominated work environments at more than twice the rate of women in mid-level positions or below (19 percent vs. 8 percent), while nearly half of respondents ages 21-49 feel that male colleagues are more likely to get promoted than female colleagues. When it comes to salaries, the latest HIMSS Compensation Survey, released at the 2016 HIMSS Annual Conference and Exhibition, found big gaps between men and women holding positions with the same title in the healthcare IT field. Men, on average, earned $126,262, compared to $100,762 for women. Twitter: @Bernie_HITN Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

When Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump accused his presumptive Democrat opponent, Hillary Clinton, of playing the 'woman's card'  in the race to the White House, it backfired. Clinton was the first to respond, unleashing many other retorts from both women and men – and an extra $2.4 million in campaign fundraising. "If fighting for women's health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in!" Clinton shot back. One of our favorite commentaries came from Kirsty Styles, writing on thenextweb.com: Styles writes about a deck of cards in production now by a creative sister and brother team which is celebrating famous women, such as Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Mary Cassatt and Beyonce. Clinton is the ace in this deck, which is due on the market in July. While enamored of the idea, in her column Styles points out that the Woman Card deck doesn’t reference any female tech innovators who've made America great. [See also: HIMSS compensation survey: Big salary gap between men, women healthcare pros.] Styles suggests three to get the creators of the card deck fired up for tech: Pioneering computer programmer Grace Hopper, Radia ‘don’t call me the Mother of the Internet’ Perlman and women in tech champion Anita Borg. Hmm, maybe someone should create a Women in Health IT card deck. Or maybe it’s enough with the cards already. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes in his April 30 column, "Trump Plays the Man's Card," that Trump is missing point. "This is the card that in the United States earns women just 92 cents to a male worker’s dollar, less than one-fifth of the seats in Congress, a bare 19 percent of corporate board seats, an assault every nine seconds — and free catcalls and condescension! Frankly, I’ll stick with my MasterCard," Kristof writes. That 92 percent earnings figure stands in contrast with the findings published in a HIMSS compensation survey released this past January. The HIMSS survey reveals that men, on average, earned $126,262, compared to $100,762 for women in the survey of 1,900 healthcare professionals that includes CEOs, CIOs, IT project managers, sales professionals and those with clinical titles such as CMIO and Clinical Systems Analyst. It means that women in health IT make about 80 percent of what men earn in the same positions. Twitter: @Bernie_HITN Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com

IBM is making quantum computing available to the public, providing access to a platform from any desktop or mobile device via the IBM Cloud. It has implications for healthcare, where another supercomputer, IBMWatson, is already at work helping researchers and clinicians eradicate cancer, making sure the world’s population gets better sleep and sorting big data to boost genomics work and precision medicine. With IBM Quantum Experience, the new cloud-based platform unveiled today, users can create algorithms and run experiments, learn about quantum computing through tutorials and simulations and get inspired by the potential of a quantum computer. The goal, say IBM executives, is to make it easier for researchers and the scientific community to accelerate innovations. [See also: IBM Watson teams up with American Cancer Society to pit cognitive computing against cancer.] Today’s announcement comes days after Big Blue launched on April 29, secure blockchain services for healthcare, government and financial services on the IBM Cloud. Blockchain is the technology underpinning bitcoin, but IBM executives and others note that blockchain is much broader than bitcoin. "Clients tell us that one of the inhibitors of the adoption of blockchain is the concern about security," Jerry Cuomo, vice president, Blockchain, IBM, said in a statement. "While there’s a sense of urgency to pioneer blockchain for business, most organizations need help to define the ideal cloud environment that enables blockchain networks to run securely in the cloud." [See also: IBM Watson takes analytics prowess overseas: Supercomputer to work on big data and genomics in Italy.] Blockchain becomes more attractive wrapped in the new security framework IBM introduced on April 29 along with new blockchain services IBM’s quantum processor, IBM Quantum Experience, is housed at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York. A universal quantum computer can be programmed to perform any computing task and will be exponentially faster than classical computers for a number of important applications for science and business, according to IBM executives. “Quantum computing is becoming a reality and it will extend computation far beyond what is imaginable with today's computers," said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president and director, IBM Research, said in a statement. "This moment represents the birth of quantum cloud computing. By giving hands-on access to IBM's experimental quantum systems, the IBM Quantum Experience will make it easier for researchers and the scientific community to accelerate innovations in the quantum field, and help discover new applications for this technology." Twitter: @Bernie_HITN Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com      

The health system’s CIO said implementing the platform will enable it to improve care while reducing cost and risk.

The funding will span more than 20 projects to address several of healthcare’s biggest burdens, according to the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

Project ECHO, a health IT pilot that launched in 2003 in rural New Mexico to connect rural doctors to specialists, is now front and center in Congress as lawmakers consider employing the model across the country. Senators Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, introduced the Expanding Capacity for Health Outcomes Act this past week. The bill calls for studies on how best to expand the model. In New Mexico, Project ECHO has recorded unprecedented success in treating patients with hepatitis C. "Project ECHO has proven that technology can help overcome traditional barriers to adequate healthcare treatment, such as distance, income and lack of specialized medical professionals for underserved communities with no access to treatment," Sanjeev Arora, MD, project director, told Healthcare IT News back in 2008. [Also: IT employed in hepatitis-C fight in rural New Mexico] The initiative is underpinned by a Web-based application developed by Infosys Technologies. Project ECHO – it stands for Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes – was funded by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, so the federal government already has a hand in the effort. "In states with large rural populations like Utah, it's vital that we do everything we can to ensure that patients have access to quality health care – no matter where they live," Hatch said in an April 29 statement posted on his website. "Our bill would help connect primary care providers in underserved areas with specialists at academic hubs, making it easier for medical professionals to access the continuing education they need and provide health care to more people," added Schatz. The bill requires the Department of Health and Human Services to work with the Health Resources & Services Administration to prioritize analysis of the model, its impacts on provider capacity and workforce issues, and evidence of its effects on quality of patient care. It calls on GAO to report on how increased adoption of a Project ECHO model might boost efficiencies and potential cost savings and improve healthcare. It also requires HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell to submit a report to Congress on the findings of the GAO report and the HHS report, including ways such models have been funded by HHS and how to integrate the models into existing funding streams and grant proposals.

Andrew Bindman, MD, will take the helm at the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Under the umbrella of the Department of Health and Human Services, AHRQ is charged with finding ways to improve healthcare by making it more accessible, affordable, equitable – and safer.

Four years after what Black Book calls the "replacement frenzy," a recent survey from the market research firm indicates that 87 percent of financially struggling hospitals now regret changing their EHR systems. Among the difficulties the survey highlighted were higher than expected costs, layoffs, declining inpatient revenues, disenfranchised clinicians and doubts over the benefits of switching systems. The survey, which polled 1,204 hospital executives and 2,133 IT staff users, found that 14 percent of all hospitals that replaced their original EHR since 2011 were losing inpatient revenue at a pace that wouldn't support the total cost of their replacement EHR. "It was a risky decision as hospitals were facing the fact that they would not be back to their pre-EHR implementation patient volumes, inpatient or ambulatory, for at least another five years," said Doug Brown, managing partner of Black Book, in a statement. [Also: 'Dissatisfaction' leading to EHR replacement trend] "No other industry spends so much per unit of IT on the part of the business that is shrinking the fastest and holds little growth as did inpatient revenues," he said. Other key findings Black Book gleaned from its survey: 62 percent of non-managerial IT staff says was a significantly negative impact on healthcare delivery directly attributable to the EHR replacement initiative; 90 percent of nurses indicated the EHR process changes diminished their ability to deliver hands-on care at the same effectiveness, yet only 5 percent of hospital leaders indicated EHR replacement had impacted care in a negative way. "In our experience polling, most executives will not admit they were oversold or that their IT decisions had adverse bearing on patient care," Brown noted. Black Book also found that hospital EHR replacements cost jobs, and levels of interoperability decreased. Also, EHR sales people exaggerated the automatic buy-in of physicians and other clinicians, according to Black Book findings.

Adam Landman, MD, will take the reins as chief information officer at Boston's Brigham and Women's Health Care, effective May 2.