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Healthcare businesses added more than 37,000 jobs in January, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Friday, as the first month of 2016 seemed to extend the sector’s job-creating trend over the past year. Overall, the U.S. economy added 151,000 jobs in the month and the unemployment rate fell slightly to 4.9 percent. [Also: The 29 best jobs in healthcare] The highest job gains in January came from hospitals, which added 23,700 jobs in the month, followed by ambulatory centers, which added 10,700 jobs. According to the labor department, healthcare has added 470,000 jobs in the past 12 months, with 40 percent of those jobs being created by hospitals. On the other hand, a few sub-sectors of healthcare actually lost jobs in January, the labor department said. Dentist offices shed 1,500 jobs in the month, data show, while medical and diagnostic laboratories lost more than 3,700 positions. Here's the seasonally adjusted breakdown for the healthcare sector. All numbers are in thousands: Industry Jan. 2015 Nov. 2015 Dec. 2015 Jan. 2016 Change Industry Jan. 2015 Nov. 2015 Dec. 2015 Jan. 2016 Change Healthcare 14,869.40 15,267.00 15,302.30 15,339.10 36.8 Ambulatory healthcare 6,752.20 6,967.50 6,989.20 6,999.90 10.7 Physicians offices 2,497.00 2,564.20 2,568.00 2,574.00 6 Dentists offices 898.6 917.3 925.9 924.4 -1.5 Other healthcare offices 798.3 823.7 827 831.1 4.1 Outpatient care centers 730.6 757.4 760.9 760.5 -0.4 Medical and diagnostic laboratories 254.3 261.1 259.7 256 -3.7 Home health care services 1,291.50 1,349.60 1,354.10 1,360.40 6.3 Other ambulatory healthcare 282 294.2 293.7 293.5 -0.2 Hospitals 4,834.90 4,987.60 5,000.00 5,023.70 23.7 Nursing and residential care facilities 3,282.30 3,311.90 3,313.10 3,315.50 2.4 Nursing care facilities 1,652.80 1,659.20 1,660.10 1,659.20 -0.9 Residential mental health facilities 605.9 609.3 608.7 610.6 1.9 Community care facilities for the elderly 862 882 881.7 883.3 1.6 Other residential care facilities 161.7 161.4 162.6 162.4 -0.2 Twitter: @HenryPowderly

The administration's 2016 year-end goal was to have 10 million people covered through the exchanges.

Digitizing clinical quality measures, also known as eCQM, isn’t just about meeting government requirements. It’s also about healthcare organizations smartly using electronic data to drive decisions, said Keith Woeltje, MD, director of healthcare informatics at the Center for Clinical Excellence at BJC HealthCare. “It’s not just about the government, but what we choose to do ourselves,” he added. Woeltje is responsible for informatics, analytics and reporting at BJC HealthCare, in addition to leading its clinical quality measurement group. He will deliver a presentation on eCQM at HIMSS16. See all of our HIMSS16 previews Woeltje said his team found electronic measures easy to use on patient adverse events and other subsequent events. However, while BJC HealthCare met the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services meaningful use requirements, there were “enormous discrepancies” with the health system’s EHR data. Woeltje will present on eCQM and BJC HealthCare’s successful implementation at HIMSS16 in Las Vegas. In his session, “Reconciling Abstracted to Electronic Quality Measures,” Woeltje will discuss BJC HealthCare’s integrated transition to electronic quality measures and his findings and recommendations, using abstracted measures. [Also: CMS makes annual update to 2016 eCQMs] It was the aforementioned discrepancies that led BJC HealthCare to partner with Encore, a healthcare IT consultancy, to analyze these gaps and manage workflows and EHR data. “We wanted to tease those out,” Woeltje said. “We met the requirements, but given that this will be the way we report clinical quality in the future, we needed to it reflect our actual quality of care,” Woeltje said. Going through the audit and discrepancy process was enormously helpful for successfully implementing eCQM. But there’s no tool that can fix these gaps, Woeltje said. While BJC HealthCare could have continued to use certified EHRs and forced the workflows to capture data to reduce gaps and improve the quality of care, the health system turned to the physicians to discover what was needed to “use electronic data to focus on internal issues for electronic surveillances,” Woeltje said. “No health system is thinking about adding more projects,” Woeltje said. “Hospitals want to focus on solutions to reduce errors and become as efficient as possible.” [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] Woeltje and his team at BJC HealthCare planned the integrated approach when they noticed more quality programs were moving into eMeasures. The results from BJC HealthCare’s transition can prove helpful for those organizations considering similar changes. The session “Reconciling Abstracted to Electronic Quality Measures” is scheduled for Tuesday, March 1, 2016, at the Sands Expo Convention Center in Palazzo D. HIMSS16 runs from Feb. 29-Mar. 4. 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.

More than a year after its implementation, Charles Jaffe, MD, CEO of HL7, is scheduled to return to the HIMSS Annual Conference to update the industry on the accomplishments to date and shed light on developments coming in the near future.  HL7 launched the Argonaut Project in collaboration with healthcare IT vendors and providers to accelerate the adoption of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources and, according to Jaffe, there are several exciting developments to discuss. See all of our HIMSS16 previews “First of all, the key that separates FHIR from some of the other standards is that it was created from the start for the implementation community,” Jaffe said. “The focus has been around making their process faster, cheaper and incrementally easier.” One of the most tangible achievements has been the development of a rheumatology app by Geisinger Health System and xG Health Solutions, a company founded by Geisinger, that talks directly with Epic and Cerner EHRs in real-time. [Also: Duke liberates Epic EHR data with Apple HealthKit and FHIR] “This provides data access for everyone in the healthcare continuum,” Jaffe said. “And it works out-of-the-box.” Other continued Argonaut developments, according to Jaffe, are focusing on accessing data, not necessarily writing it. Both Partners HealthCare and Lockheed Martin have recently developed programs to give users access to data across platforms, and Jaffe credits FHIR for much of the progress. The Argonaut Project is also working with EHR providers to speed up the development process. “Within Argonaut we have a series of rapid development protocols we call ‘sprint,’” Jaffe said. Rather than a typical 3-5 month development cycle, they’ve implemented a 2-3 week cycle to come back more quickly with enhancements and improvements. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] “It’s worked extremely well,” Jaffe said. “A lot of the success we’ve had is based on the success of the sprint program.” FHIR is now being utilized on four continents and brings developers together at HL7 meetings, but also smaller groups at events like connectathons that offer unique collaboration opportunities for the implementation community. The session “HL7 Argonaut Project: One Year Later,” is slated for Wednesday, March 3, 2016 from 4:00 – 5:00 pm in the Sands Expo Convention Center Rock of Ages Theater. Twitter: @HealthITNews 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.

Tamara St. Claire is the chief innovation officer of Xerox Healthcare – and later this month at HIMSS16 she will also be among the Social Media Ambassadors credentialed to cover the conference.

(SPONSORED) Learn how system interoperability is making the process of sharing patient data simpler than ever been before with substantial benefits.

By John Halamka’s standards, healthcare IT is pretty average. In fact, he’d only give the sector a B-minus.

Many providers are at a crossroads right now: Either join an accountable care organization or be placed into Medicare’s Merit-Based Incentive Payment System. Set to begin in 2017, MIPS uses value-based modifiers to rank providers by quality and is expected to fold together with meaningful use, essentially merging the current pay-for-performance models under one umbrella. MIPS is part of the Medicare Access & CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, or MACRA, which repeals CMS' Medicare Part B Sustainable Growth Rate reimbursement formula and replaces it with a pay-for-performance model. Providers can choose to join an ACO or be part of MIPS. "People are waiting with bated breath for MIPS rules, just like they were for meaningful use," said Tom Lee, CEO and founder of SA Ignite, which develops analytics tools to help providers keep track of complex government programs. "The biggest thing on the horizon is there are a lot of details on this that will come to light when the rules come out." [Also: Behavioral telehealth key for ACO success] "MIPS has higher bonuses, but higher risks," Lee said."Providers don't need to choose a physician group to be a part of the program, but those providers who don't remain on top of the heap lose money.” The rules are due to be finalized by November. Although Acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt has hinted draft rules may come out as soon as this spring. When choosing a program, providers must assess the risk and whether they want the guaranteed 5 percent from ACOs or choose MPIS where the value-based swing between the lowest and highest reimbursement could be up to 36 precent when accounting for bonuses, Lee said.   [Also: Mostashari's ACO startup is growing] "ACOs are unproven, and most have been penalized; weigh that against costs to get the ACO up-and-running," Lee said.  The trouble is that many providers are struggling with a lack of resources, which makes it difficult to "poll through the information to meet these requirements," said Darren Barnes, director of quality and performance improvement, Southern Illinois University HealthCare. "In today's world of quality improvement, you not only have to provide quality care, but prove you can deliver," said Barnes. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] Many ambulatory providers in particular are having difficulty transitioning into a quality management system, as "hospital measures are better defined than with multi-specialty ambulatory care organizations," Barnes said. "With data requirements and support, healthcare organizations are being asked to do more with less." Hospitals have a leg up on quality measure improvements, compared with physician practices. Where hospitals can assess workflows and certain measures on a daily basis, that's more challenging for small ambulatory facilities, posing a special challenge for participating in a physician reimbursement program. Moreover, data is hard to pull from the EHRs, said Barnes, and providers will continue to struggle "until we can build these systems to look at patient needs and improve the ability for patients to have access to the data for more personalized care." Twitter: @JessiefDavis

Chuck Kesler, chief information security officer at Duke Health, and Mac McMillan, CEO and cofounder of healthcare IT security consulting firm CynergisTek, share similar philosophies on healthcare data security.

Electronic health record giant Epic Systems has cracked Glassdoor's list of top 20 companies that provide their employees unique benefits and perks. Epic joined other well-known businesses in the field of healthcare IT as well as business titans such as Netflix, Facebook, Google and Disney. Glassdoor, one of the three largest U.S. job websites, picked companies with unique benefits by analyzing hundreds of thousands of reviews employees posted on its website since August 2014. Among some of the benefits: "Panda Fridays," improv classes, ski slope passes and a $30-a-month book allowance. [Also: Epic buys Mayo Clinic data center in $46 million sale-leaseback] The Glassdoor analysis puts Epic at No. 16 on the list of top 20 companies, with an overall benefit rating of 4.3 out of 5. It's credited for, among other perks, enabling its employees – once they've worked for the company five years – to take a paid four-week sabbatical to pursue their creative talents. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] Other firms in the healthcare space are on the list. Accenture, touted for its commitment to LGBT rights, covers gender reassignment for its employees. PwC offers its employees $1,200 per year for student loan debt reimbursement. Salesforce offers six days of paid volunteer time off each year, and $1,000 for employees to donate to the charities of their choice. Other tech companies in Glassdoor's Top 20 include Twitter, which offers on-site acupuncture and improv classes; Adobe, which shuts down the company for a week each in winter and summer, and Airbnb, which gives employees an annual stipend of $2,000 to travel and stay in an Airbnb listing anywhere worldwide. Twitter: @HealthITNews