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Three years after first announcing it had chosen Epic for its new electronic health record system, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center went live on schedule on March 4, according to the Houston Business Journal. MD Anderson went to market for a new EHR in late 2012 and announced Epic as its vendor partner in the spring of 2013. Financial terms of the project have not been disclosed. [Also: Judy Faulkner: 'Good software is art'] In a 2014 Fiscal Year in Review, Richard Champlin, MD, chair of the health system's Department of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy, said the project would wrap up around this time. "We are involved in the planning for the March 2016 go-live with our new electronic health record system, Epic," he wrote. One reason the rollout may have gone smoothly so far could be the experience of MD Anderson's Chief Information Officer Chris Belmont; before joining the cancer center in 2013, he served as CIO of New Orleans-based Ochsner Health System, where he implemented Epic across its 10 hospitals and more than three-dozen clinics. Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN

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

Christopher Harle will work with University of Florida researchers to develop software to help patients better understand what they are granting access to when they approve use of their electronic health records for research purposes.

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.

The Mississippi Division of Medicaid is being touted as the first Medicaid agency in the country to send and receive clinical data in real-time with a health system using an Epic electronic health record. The exchange, powered by data analytics company MedeAnalytics, was with the University of Mississippi Medical Center, in Jackson, the state's biggest Medicaid provider. "Giving doctors and nurses access to important information such as medications, diagnoses and allergies ensures that they can make the best care decisions for Medicaid patients," said John Showalter, MD, chief health information officer of UMMC, in a statement. [Also: Judy Faulkner says 'Good software is art'] MedeAnalytics first helped the Mississippi Division of Medicaid with the groundwork by creating an enterprise master patient index and single patient identifier in 2014. To do so, the company analyzed and de-duplicated records from 2.3 million Medicaid beneficiaries. The medical records had been collected over more than a decade. Today, the Medicaid division and UMMC can share Consolidated-Clinical Document Architecture patient summaries through UMMC's Epic EHR. MedeAnalytics expects it will receive about 3,500 clinical inquiries per day from UMMC. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] MedeAnalytics points to several benefits of real-time access, including emergency room care due to a more complete patient record, improved case management since Medicaid utilization and remaining benefits are able to be quickly accessed, and better care management since immunization records and alerts help ensure more up-to-date care. Twitter: @HealthITNews

Especially since participants in a recent survey indicated that they wasted time and money on measures that are not clinically relevant, some are starting to ask whether its worth it?

Medical practices spend an average of 785 hours per physician and $15.4 billion annually reporting quality measures to Medicare, Medicaid and private payers, according to a new report in Health Affairs. The study, led by researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College and funded by the Physicians Foundation, looked at the quality reporting efforts of primary care, cardiology, orthopedic and multi-specialty practices, polling 1000 of them (250 of each type), drawn at random from the membership rolls of the Medical Group Management Association. Their findings suggest that, while "much is to be gained from quality measurement, the current system is unnecessarily costly, and greater effort is needed to standardize measures and make them easier to report," researchers said. [Also: Slavitt, DeSalvo: Health IT has to work better for doctors] Practices reported spending 15.1 hours per week per physician wrangling quality measures -- 2.6 hours each week for physicians, with the rest of the work going to nurses or medical assistants. About 12 of those hours were spent logging data into medical records solely for quality reporting. Some 80 percent of practices said they spend more time managing quality measures than three years ago. Almost half said that's become a significant burden. But just 27 percent thought those measures necessarily correlated with quality care. Beyond the time invested, the dollars add up too. Weill Cornell researchers found that practices spent $40,069 per physician each year on quality reporting – totaling $15.4 billion annually. "The cost to physician practices of dealing with quality measures is high and rising," researchers said. "On top of the obscene waste of billions of dollars each year on quality measures, the most alarming thing about this study of MGMA member practices is that nearly three-fourths of the groups reported being measured on quality measures that are not clinically relevant," said Halee Fischer-Wright, MD, MGMA's president and CEO, in a statement. "The vast majority also stated current measures are useless for improving patient care," she added. "This study proves that the current top-down approach has failed. It serves no purpose to have over three thousand competing measures of quality across government and private initiatives." While care quality is essential and reporting standardization is critical, "if measures don't improve patient care, it’s an exercise in futility," said Fischer-Wright. "As the largest contributor to the problem, the federal government needs to get out of the business of dictating patient care through wasteful mandates and create simplified systems to support medical practices in improving quality across the country." As HIMSS16 in Las Vegas this past week, officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services emphasized that quality measures would continue to be a key component in CMS' reimbursement programs. [Also: Meaningful use will still be part of MIPS reimbursement, CMS says] Kate Goodrich, MD, director of CMS' Center for Clinical Standards and Quality, said new payment rules under the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, or MACRA, would reimburse physicians based on a composite performance score factoring in quality measures (30 percent), resource use (30 percent), clinical practice improvement activities (15 percent) and meaningful use of information technology (25 percent). "Our intent is to have a single, unified program," she said, while acknowledging the need for flexibility and avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach: "We know physician practices are very different from one another." Earlier in the week, CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt said the agency has been listening more intently than ever to physician feedback, working with those on the front lines to understand their pain points. He cited actual quotes from physicians, including one who said, "Most of what I'm doing during the day is entering data into the EHR." While offering few policy specifics, Slavitt seemed to indicate that's a message that's resonating with CMS. Doctors are "not describing problems we don't know how to solve," he said. "Job one is to bridge the gulf between our public policy work and what's actually happening with patient care. That has to become an integral part of how we do things." Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN

Movement hopes the analytics access will encourage entrepreneurs to use health data to improve patient safety and reduce preventable deaths.

(SPONSORED) In digital health, a lot can change in a year. This time last year, CMS had just announced Medicare reimbursement for telemedicine services.

Cyberattackers targeted Apple users over the weekend with the first known ransomware written specifically for Apple software, according to security firm Palo Alto Networks.     Ransomware is a fast-growing threat that encrypts data on infected machines and demands that users pay a ransom in digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, to receive an electronic key so they can retrieve their data. [Also: Hollywood Presbyterian gives in to hackers, pays ransom] The most high-profile ransomware attack happened just last month when attackers struck Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center and held its data hostage, effectively reverting the hospital back to a pre-digital state in which employees used paper records and fax machines. While most pieces of ransomware target Windows operating systems, in this new case hackers attacked Macs through a tainted copy of a program known as Transmission, which can transfer data via the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing network, Palo Alto Networks explained. Any Mac users that downloaded version 2.90 of Transmission, released on Friday, were infected with the ransomware. “On March 4, we detected that the Transmission BitTorrent client installer for OS X was infected with ransomware, just a few hours after installers were initially posted,” Palo Alto Networks said on its site. “We have named this Ransomware KeRanger.” Transmission responded by removing the malicious version of its software from its website and . on Sunday it released a version that it claims automatically removes the ransomware from infected Macs. Transmission users were advised to immediately install the new update, version 2.92, if they suspected they might be infected. KeRanger is programmed to stay quiet for three days after infecting a computer, then connect to the attacker's command and control servers to start encrypting files so they cannot be accessed, Palo Alto Networks added. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] “The malware then begins encrypting certain types of document and data files on the system,” the company said. “After completing the encryption process, KeRanger demands that victims pay one bitcoin (about $400) to a specific address to retrieve their files.” If paying the ransom seems far-fetched, hospital executives should know that’s exactly what Hollywood Presbyterian was forced to do when they settled for a $17,000 ransom. Twitter: @HealthITNews