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The vast majority of Americans say they would welcome using technology and mobile devices to monitor their health, according to a recent study by the Society for Participatory Medicine, a nonprofit membership organization focused on patient engagement. The study found 84 percent of survey respondents felt tracking blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, physical activity and other data with a user-friendly mobile device between provider visits would help to better manage their health. [Also: Remote patient monitoring market booming amid readmission fines] "The important findings from the survey show patients really want to partner with physicians," said Daniel Z. Sands, MD, co-founder, co-chair of the Society for Participatory Medicine. "It's not a typical service industry, like the car wash model of healthcare where the patient cruises through the system," he added. "Providers need to engage patients, and patients want it." In fact, 77 percent of survey respondents felt it was both important for themselves and their healthcare provider. ORC International interviewed more than 1,000 Americans on behalf of the Society for Participatory Medicine and found 76 percent of respondents would use a clinically accurate and easy-to-use monitoring device; 81 percent would be more likely to use a device if their provider recommended it, and 57 percent would like to use the device and share the information with their provider. "I think many physicians believe patients just want to come in for their visits, but don't really want to engage in their healthcare," said Sands. "The participatory method is really important, but the question is, do physicians want to have a partnership?" "If we get it right, we have the opportunity to leverage technology to help patients contribute to their health information without coming into the office," he added. "This information is valuable to patients and to providers. It's an important tool to get healthcare outside of the office." According to Sands, it's a change in mindset for many providers that medical schools are attempting to combat. But it's challenging in the constraints of a medical practice to transition to this type of care. Further research must be done on physicians to determine their issues and thoughts. Twitter: @JessiefDavis

Two employees of Jackson Memorial Hospital have been fired for accessing and leaking the medical records of New York Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul after the football star lost part of his hand in a July 4, 2015 fireworks accident. The hospital, in its statement, said it had chosen not to comment earlier due to litigation surrounding the incident that has since been settled. [Also: Hospital draws HIPAA heat after NFL medical record tweet] "As part of our investigation into the breach, it was discovered that two employees inappropriately accessed the patient's health record. That finding resulted in the termination of both employees,” officials said in the statement.  “Protecting the privacy of our patients is a top priority at Jackson Health System. Any time we have allegations of a breach, we immediately and thoroughly investigate." Pierre-Paul’s medical records were reportedly leaked to an ESPN reporter in July, who then posted a portion of the player's info on Twitter. The record showed that Pierre-Paul had his right finger amputated after the July 4 fireworks accident. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] HIPAA laws only apply to healthcare providers, which means the ESPN reporter did not violate HIPAA in posting the leaked record on Twitter. However, the reporter’s ethical judgment was heavily debated after he posted Pierre-Paul’s protected patient data. Pierre-Paul missed much of the 2015 NFL season due to the injury. He has since returned and plays with a protective glove over his injured hand. Twitter: @HealthITNews

WellSpan Surgery and Rehabilitation Hospital is the latest health organization to earn a Stage 7 Award from HIMSS Analytics. The achievement represents the York, Pennsylvania-based hospital’s attainment of the highest level on the Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model, whose eight stages measure a facility's prowess in implementing and using information technology. Only 4.1 percent of the more than 5,400 hospitals in the U.S. have reached Stage 7, which requires a complete EMR environment with continuity of care transactions, and data continuity with the ED, ambulatory sites and more. [Also: Stage 7 success stories] WellSpan Health, which serves the communities of central Pennsylvania and northern Maryland, is an an integrated health system with more than 850 physicians and advanced practice clinicians, a home care organization, six hospitals and more than than 140 patient care locations. John H. Daniels, global vice president in the healthcare advisory services group, of HIMSS Analytics, said a couple things stood out during a validation site visit to WellSpan Health – notably, strong operational and governance support of its overall electronic health record strategy and a commitment to clinical leadership in its IT projects. "This approach was evident in the case studies they presented that showed significant benefits realization in improved outcomes and cost savings," Daniels said in a statement [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] R. Hal Baker, MD, senior vice president of clinical improvement and chief information officer at WellSpan, said the hospital "was built around leveraging the electronic medical record," and pointed to effective the integration of biomedical devices as one of its biggest achievements. WellSpan Surgery and Rehabilitation Hospital will be recognized at the 2016 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition, which takes place Feb. 29, through March 4, at the  Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas. Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN 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.

Patient care teams at Yale-New Haven Hospital, looking for a faster, more efficient and more secure way to communicate with each other in the emergency room, have adopted smartphone applications to speed up workflows. The changeover from stilted clinician communications and responsiveness as a result of the hospital’s emergency room reconstruction. At certain times, different areas of the department would be closed creating confusion and making it difficult to locate personnel. In addition, the way the pediatric emergency department was logistically set up, the clinicians working there had no line of sight, making it hard for them to communicate with one another. [Also: Intermountain deploys ReadyPoint for audit compliance] Eventually, the hospital bucked its traditional methods, which included a public address system and a VOIP wireless phone system, turned to MH-CURE – for Clinical Urgent Response – a smartphone application from Waltham, Massachusetts-based Mobile Heartbeat. MH-CURE offers care teams secure, single smartphone access to all clinical communications, pertinent patient information and lab data. Care team members have a choice of using their own smartphone or sharing hospital-supplied devices. It consolidates clinical communications, including alarms and notifications, pertinent patient information, lab data, texting, voice and photography. Allen Hsiao, chief medical information officer and associate professor of pediatrics and of emergency medicine at Yale-New Haven, said adoption was easy and the staff realized early the power of having everyone on one platform. [Also: OhioHealth taps Epic's MyChart Bedside] "We choose the ED because it's as a self-contained a unit as you're going to find in a hospital," said Hsiao. "We certainly have the dynamic need of trying to find the right nurse, the right physician, at the right time, they are often in different rooms out of sight." So far, he said, the impact has been positive. "We're saving a lot of time. We used to play phone tag, used to get interrupted taking care of patients, having to step out to take a call or answering an overhead page. It's giving us back time with the patient at the bedside." Hsiao said that if a doctor or nurse gets a text, they can glance at it very quickly without leaving the patient and they can decide whether or not they need to step away or if it can wait and continue to do what they were doing with the patient. In addition, their train of thought and conversation with the patient is not interrupted. "Unlike a traditional text message I can see if another physician or nurse has read my text or not – they can tell if I read it or if it’s been delivered and not read yet," he said. "That helps a great deal. Then I know if they haven't read it and it's urgent, I can escalate with a phone call." Hsiao said that with traditional text or pager you have no way of knowing if the receiving person read a text or not. For example, if a lab sends critical lab alerts, instead of playing phone tag the alert is automated – so when something is critical, needs intervention right away, as soon as the result is back the text gets triggered right to a smartphone. Hsiao said the effect on patient care has been positive. "It cuts down on the delays between awareness of information and actual treatment." Hsiao said adoption has been driven by the flexibility of the platform, such as the ability to use an Android or iPhone device, and integration with the electronic health record. "All these features add to the functionality and the importance of the technology so it becomes a secure HIPAA-compliant ecosystem for clinical tools, that is the wave of the future," he said. According to a Mobile Heartbeat, an outside consulting firm conducted a study, before and after the MH-CURE implementation, to determine how long it took for the clinicians in the emergency departments to communicate with one another. Results revealed that the amount of time required for clinicians to locate and transmit information to one another was greatly reduced, allowing staff to spend more time with patients and thus provide better patient care. In a poll of clinicians, 75 percent said they now found it easy or very easy to communicate with colleagues with MH-Cure; just 24 percent felt that way prior to using it. Nearly 75 percent, meanwhile, reported that MH-CURE has improved patient workflow and patient safety. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] James Webb, vice president of strategic accounts for Mobile Heartbeat, said that the market for this smartphone technology is growing because secure texting is a major driver. "What we're seeing at MobileHeart beat is that people do not want to lock in to just a secure text solution, they want a full communications package, clinical workflows and inputs and alerts from various systems in the hospital," said Webb. "We see a lot of sites looking at their mobility strategy and really the major thing for their apps is they have to be able to play well together." Hsiao said that in addition to the adult and pediatric ED the smartphone app is now being deployed in its medical and surgical departments – and recently in intensive care units and emergency departments – at all of Yale's other hospital campuses, including the main campus in New Haven. Twitter: @HealthITNews

More than one-third of hospitals aren't meeting National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators performance metrics, a new Ohio State University study on chief nurse executives finds. At the same time, it showed that evidence-based practice – a care-delivery approach that integrates problem solving, best practices, clinician expertise and patient preferences – is a low priority across the United States. Although multiple studies show evidence-based practice results in high-quality care, improved patient outcomes and lower costs, and nurse executives recognize its effectiveness, implementation is relatively low. [Also: IBM Watson to help tackle heart disease] "EBP isn’t being implemented to the state that it really needs to be to accomplish high quality healthcare safety and cost," said Bernadette Melnyk, MD, dean of Ohio State University's College of Nursing. "There's a major disconnect between the priorities of chief nurses and evidence-based practice." While the majority of surveyed nurses placed quality and safety as top priorities, EBP was ranked at the bottom. Melnyk said this suggested that nurses "don’t truly understand that EBP is a direct path to get their hospitals to quality safety and reduce costs." A lack in budget allocations is one of the major reasons for this gap, the survey found. Hospitals and CNEs aren't investing resources into this evidence-based culture to help implement EBP measures for a care foundation. [Also: Clinical decision support: It's about more than technology] "Hospitals need to invest in getting all providers and clinicians, really up to scale in EBP," Melnyk said. "Then create a culture and environment that support their clinicians to consistently practice this way. "There are a lot of barriers that exist in the healthcare system; there are misconceptions, politics and the tradition of 'that's the way we do it' that's alive and well in many institutions across the U.S," she added. When most Americans head to the hospital, they assume they're getting evidence-based care, but that's not the reality, the report suggests. Nurse executives need EBP education and skill-building to implement the practice, the survey found. But furthermore healthcare systems need to support staff to utilize EBP. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] Research shows EBP teamwork leads to better care quality and outcomes, but hospital must promote the practice as essential and expect clinicians to implement them. "We also need to get academia up, where they're creating students steeped in EBP and they come into a healthcare environment where that is expected," Melnyk said. Twitter: @JessiefDavis

Respiratory care provider Lincare has been ordered to pay $239,800 in penalties for violating the HIPAA Privacy Rule. An administrative law judge ruled in favor of the Office for Civil Rights, which is charged with enforcing the rule. OCR had asked the judge to approve the penalties, and the judge granted them on all issues, the agency announced on February 3. [Also: Obama gun control push leads HHS to change HIPAA rule] "While OCR prefers to resolve issues through voluntary compliance, this case shows that we will take the steps necessary, including litigation, to obtain adequate remedies for violations of the HIPAA Rules," OCR Director Jocelyn Samuels, said in a press statement. "The decision in this case validates the findings of our investigation."  Lincare claimed it had not violated HIPAA rules because the protected health information was "stolen" by the individual who discovered it on the premises previously shared with the Lincare employee. The judge rejected this argument. Lincare provides respiratory care, infusion therapy and medical equipment to in-home patients. The company operates more than 850 branch locations in 48 states.  [Also: Oncology group slapped with $750K HIPAA fine] OCR's investigation of Lincare began after the agency received a complaint that a Lincare employee left behind documents containing the protected health information of 278 patients after moving to another home. According to OCR, the employee removed patients' information from Lincare's office, left it exposed where an unauthorized person had access, and then abandoned it altogether.  [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] The OCR investigation found that Lincare had inadequate policies and procedures in place to safeguard patient information that was taken off site, although employees, who worked in patients' homes, routinely removed PHI from Lincare offices. Moreover, evidence revealed Lincare had an unwritten policy requiring certain employees to store protected health information in their own vehicles for extended periods. Even when Lincare was aware of the complaint and the OCR investigation, the company "took only minimal action to correct its policies and strengthen safeguards to ensure compliance with the HIPAA Rules," OCR officials stated. Twitter: @HealthITNews

(SPONSORED) What if you could know in advance which patients would benefit from certain therapies? Or could intervene in a medical crisis before it's too late? While doctors have traditionally had to rely on instinct to make these calls, predictive analytics could be a game changer for hospitals, healthcare providers and patients.

Three weeks after the Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50, they will meet again at HIMSS16 in Las Vegas.

Analytics functionality has improved measurably in recent years, according to Chilmark Research, but  workflow integration remains a key hurdle.

A bipartisan group of Senators this week unveiled legislation to remove Medicare barriers to telemedicine use in a bill that proponents say can generate $1.8 billion in savings over 10 years. Led by Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the CONNECT for Health Act seeks to create an opening for more providers to incorporate telemedicine into their practices. The Senate group hopes to use the platform to further study its effects on healthcare. [Also: Doctor on Demand expands telehealth services to include psychiatry] Currently, many providers are restricted in telemedicine use by geography, strict rules around originating sites, restrictions on store-and-forward technologies, limitations on reimbursable codes and more. Under the CONNECT act, the Senators propose a bridge program to assist providers in the transition to the new Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, with its the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System, by removing many restrictions to telehealth and remote patient monitoring under Medicare. Qualifying providers participating in MACRA's alternative payment models, for example, will be allowed to use patient monitoring for patients with chronic conditions. In addition, it would allow new originating sites – dialysis facilities, telestroke evaluation and management sites and Native American health service facilities – and permit further telehealth and remote patient monitoring in community health centers  and rural health clinics. The bill would also allow telehealth and RPM to be basic benefits in Medicare Advantage. That optimism will be scrutinized by the Congressional Budget Office, which has been skeptical of telehealth's ability to reduce government spending. The act is endorsed by a long list of organizations including American Medical Association, Kaiser Permanente, Cerner, AARP, Anthem, Telecommunications Industry Association, American Academy of Physicians and National Association of ACOs, amongst others. Twitter: @JessiefDavis