Jessica Davis

Week-long event launched Tuesday, designed to improve defense strategies for all industries.

Premier Healthcare, a physician-led multispecialty provider group based in Bloomington, Indiana, has reported a possible breach that could affect 205,748 patients after a laptop with patient data was stolen, the company announced on Tuesday. For 1,769 of these people, social security numbers and or financial information could also be accessed from the stolen laptop. Premier employees discovered that the laptop was missing from the locked and alarmed administrative office of the billing department on January 4. [Also: 7 largest data breaches of 2015] Although password-protected, the laptop wasn't encrypted. It contained PDF documents, spreadsheets and screenshots of patient billing issues and contained demographic information like clinical data, date of birth and names. According to Premier, there's no evidence the information on the laptop was the actual target of the theft or that the data has been used or accessed for fraudulent purposes. Premier said it took immediate steps to investigate and recover the laptop, including notifying patients and filing a police report. Law enforcement has so far been unable to locate the laptop or identify the perpetrator. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] "Premier has taken a number of steps to help keep this from happening in the future," Premier officials said in a statement, noting that the provider group has begun to encrypt all of Premier's computers and are reviewing the institution's protocols to protect against a repeat theft. "Premier deeply regrets this occurred and is committed to excellent care and protecting the privacy of personal information," officials said, adding that anyone with questions about the breach can call 877-509-8356 or email HIPAA@premierhealthcare.org. Twitter: @JessiefDavis

LAS VEGAS - While healthcare industry veterans were speaking on lessons learned at HIMSS16, health IT's up-and-comers were participating in a meeting of the minds at the first HIMSS-hosted event dedicated to Millennials. Overheard at the Future Leaders of Health IT Reception, held March 2 at the Venetian's Label Lounge, was a range of conversations touching on everything from favorite new technologies to strategies for business initiatives. [Also: See photos from Day 3 of HIMSS16] But the overall theme was a changing landscape for healthcare and and technology alike. Millennials see great potential in the latest tech, but say the key to incorporating new IT is culture change. "My hope is that healthcare should become like the hospitality industry, like a spa or airline," said Neel Mehta, co-founder of EpiFinder, a tool that helps providers effectively diagnose epilepsy syndromes at point-of-care. For instance, he said, airlines have a black box that records all activity on flight; healthcare lacks a similar device. There's value in transactional data, following the patient from the time they check in until they leave, Mehta said. Right now, "healthcare is reactive, rather than proactive." The HX360 Executive Leadership Forum was another point of interest for attendees, who appreciated the smaller scale and more "digestible" format. For these emerging healthcare leaders, the new innovations and crucial care delivery models were "inspiring." One attendee noted the health IT landscape was much different than it was 30 years ago: It's much more diverse. But despite these changes, some Millennials are still waiting for the industry to catch up. Kunjan Divatia, director of revenue cycle and access at Yale New Haven Health System, said his organization is making great strides in terms of innovation, but still sees room for progress on a nationwide scale. He said some states – California, for instance –  are doing better than others in setting the stage for getting newer ideas into the mix. But he said he looks forward to the day when government and private-sector health organizations are able to include more healthcare leaders from his generation into regulation and leadership committees. Twitter: @JessiefDavis This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

San Francisco start-up Tiatros, a doctor-driven, patient-centered social network, has joined the IBM Watson Ecosystem, the companies announced March 2 at HIMSS16. Tiatros was designed to allow physicians, with the consent of patients, to create a social network around the patient, including all doctors involved in their treatment and their family members. The first user of the platform was the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco. UCSF hopes to leverage Watson to analyze personality insights for more personalized treatment, officials say. [Also: See photos from Day 3 of HIMSS16] Currently, UCSF is using Tiatros to address the behavioral health needs of young veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq to keep all parties connected to the patient – whether family or multiple providers – in the loop. "The real measure of how a patient is doing is the story they tell, not the boxes they check; that tells part of the story, not the whole story," said Kim Norman, MD, psychiatry professor, UCSF. "I think the online treasure trove of data in clinical practice is in the unstructured data and the story it tells. "I feel Watson gives you the tool to really analyze and extract that data, patient by patient and aggregate that data to really understand populations," he added. Data is entered in increments of 2,000 words through an essay format or using the most recent text messages from a patient. With the addition of Watson, the platform can analyze the information to accurately assess the personality traits, human values and needs of a patient. For veterans, this means Watson can determine patients with pre-imposed personality traits to be the most resilient in preventing posttraumatic stress disorders and those more likely to respond to an intervention, Norman said. Furthermore, interventions can be modified to match the traits. Additionally, Watson analytics can provide themes and allow providers to measure how patients are doing based on their stories. Twitter: @JessiefDavis This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

Adam H. Greene, partner, Davis Wright Tremaine, says education, discretion can help reduce privacy infractions.

The institute claims there are 10 tech safety hazards that all hospital leaders must beware.

AMIA president touts the need for an informed workforce who can use the data to make EHRs more useful.

LAS VEGAS - As healthcare moves into a more globally connected environment and government programs, such as those from CMS determine what costs should be for providers, organizations must look toward non-labor needs to improve care outcomes and reduce costs, according to Mark Ziemianski, vice president, Business Analytics at Children's Health System of Texas. "In the past, companies have always looked at labor first because it's easier when addressing cost reductions," Ziemianski said. But to make sure patients are efficiently served and reduce redundancies, services must be aligned to meet the patient's needs. When it comes to improving quality, Pamela Arora, senior vice president, CIO at Children's Medical Center of Dallas said, "You get what you measure. "When we look at serving our community, we have to aggressively manage our costs," she added. "But at the same time, we're looking at how our models work in the community." And reducing costs doesn't necessarily mean cutting back. "It's a matter of figuring out where we need to re-channel resources," Arora said. "Quite frankly - high cost doesn't equal quality." Children's Medical Center of Dallas is a nonprofit, academic healthcare institution in Dallas-Fort Worth, made up of two full-service hospitals and is the seventh-largest pediatric healthcare provider in the country. Children's has been updating its care models over the past few years. Arora said they found analytics have improved patient care, by providing a visual to the community about quality and improvements. Instead of focusing on spending and how to reduce redundancies, Arora said executives need to go to the staff on the front lines to ask about their needs. In doing so, it can empower the staff and make them more open to change. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] "What we're trying to do is increase value and reduce redundancies," Ziemianski said. "We're no longer just looking at what we've done well, we're looking at everything. We took all of our staff and brought everyone back to fundamental training to improve care." "We saw real benefits on all accounts; including staff who could do their jobs better because they had more knowledge," he added. Contributing to the successful cost reduction and its acceptance within the organization, Ziemianski said was making it easier for staff to track their performance using analytics tools designed and implemented by Children's. Twitter: @JessiefDavis This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

Cedars-Sinai, Wake Forest and Stanford Healthcare executives shared challenges for sustaining innovation at the HX360 Innovation Leaders Program kick-off event.

The same week the Hollywood Presbyterian attack was making headlines around the world,  another species of ransomware – aptly named "Locky" – was first observed in the wild.