Lancaster General adopts Mobile Heartbeat communications platform

Here is Health Data Management’s weekly roundup of new health IT contract wins and go-lives:

* Lancaster General Hospital, part of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, has gone live on a secure smartphone application platform from Mobile Heartbeat. The organization, which is preparing to permit use of BYOD devices later this year, is replacing its SpectraLink and Ascom Healthcare smartphones. When fully deployed, the platform will support 1,350 users.

* University of Missouri Health Care has selected the revenue cycle management software suite of Cerner and will implement the technology across its five hospitals and more than 50 primary and specialty clinics. The package includes registration, scheduling, patient accounting and practice management software, as well as transaction services with its existing Cerner Millennium electronic health record. Integration of clinical and financial data will enable clinicians and staff to update the billing process throughout a patient’s visit and enhance clinical documentation to improve reimbursement and limit claims errors.



* Ascension Health since 2016 has used the revenue cycle management software of R1 with the vendor helping to optimize operations related to scheduling, patient access, claims management and payment functions. Now, Ascension Health is expanding the relationship with a new 10-year contract that will add an additional $2.5 billion of net patient revenue under R1 management in a full outsourcing arrangement. The vendor also will provide sophisticated analytics.

Also See: 10 essential provisions to include in EHR contracts

* Independent Health, a Buffalo, N.Y. -based insurer, has outsourced many of its functions to NTT Data Services to improve use of information technology and improve costs. The vendor will manage service desk support, desktop engineering, messaging, mobility, telecommunications and network asset management services. Visits to current health plan clients validated the decision to select NTT Data, says Eric Decker, chief information officer at Independent Health.

* SacValley MedShare, a health information exchange serving 12 counties in the North Central Valley of California, will implement the clinical data normalization and standardization services platform of Diameter Health Fusion. The HIE serves 800,000 residents in the largest geographic region of any of the state’s other HIEs. “Now that we have connected communities across our service area, many of which are underserved rural areas from a healthcare perspective, our partnership with Diameter Health will enable us to move to the next level by substantially improving the quality of clinical data that we gather and distribute,” says Elizabeth Steffen, project manager at SacValley. “It’s about more than information management; we want to fulfil the promise of clinical information to improve patient care.”