Thursday, February 15, 2018
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The broadly bipartisan, two-year budget bill passed in the wee hours Friday provides increased funding for community health centers. The bill also closes the Medicare “doughnut hole” drug coverage gap in 2019, and requires larger discounts from drug manufacturers, which are to be shared with Medicare beneficiaries. Medicare caps on therapy sessions are permanently repealed. Combined with funding passed last month, it funds the Children’s Health Insurance Program for the next decade. (
The New York Times;
ABC News;
Kaiser Health News)
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The budget deal included many CHRONIC Care Act provisions, which allow managed care organizations to tailor benefits to specifically help those with chronic illness. It also pulls in provisions from telemedicine and telehealth bills. It eliminates geographic restrictions for stroke telemedicine services and gives accountable care organizations more flexibility in using telehealth services under Medicare Advantage (beginning in 2020). The Independence at Home demonstration was also extended for two years. (
mHealthIntelligence;
Modern Healthcare;
Forbes)
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Innovation & Transformation
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Larry Smarr heads the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. He also has Crohn’s disease, and has been using his own body to measure his body’s input and output to precisely track and update a three-dimensional image of his insides, fully accessible via virtual reality. His goal is to make each of us “the CEO of our own body.” And when he recently needed surgery to remove a bowel obstruction, he gave his doctor the biggest, best view of his insides she ever had. “It was like the difference between driving around before and after Google Maps,” she says. (
The Atlantic)
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The Apple Watch was able to detect—with 85% accuracy—which wearers using the Watch’s heart rate sensor had diabetes. The research was based on data from the Framington Heart Study. This is the first large-scale study showing ordinary heart rate sensors alone, when paired with the right algorithm, can identify diabetes. (
TechCrunch)
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Electronic health records are designed for filing insurance claims, but they provide little helpful clinical information for doctors. Some providers are calling for a change in how they’re structured to put new information up front, so it accurately represents the patient’s current status. One provider describes a five-year-old’s 16-page emergency room visit record that queried the child’s sexual history but provided no diagnosis. (
MedPage Today;
KevinMD blog)
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Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas has given the state’s health information exchange a grant to expand its services to include social determinants that may affect health, such as housing, transportation and food security. The HIE will, in turn, integrate that data into its data repository. The goal of the pilot is to give providers a more holistic view of patient health that includes clinical, social and behavioral risks. (
EHR Intelligence)
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OxyContin sales team slashed: Purdue Pharma, facing dozens of lawsuits over aggressive marketing tactics and the current opioid abuse problem, will sideline half its salesforce and stop pushing its opioid painkiller. The remaining salesforce will promote its drug used to treat opioid-induced constipation. (
BenefitsPro)
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New flu drugs on the way: It’s too late for this year, but there are several new treatments in the works to prevent and treat the flu; they're coming as soon as next season. One is a Tamiflu alternative; another is a single pill--intended to reduce the chance that people will fail to finish the regimen and thus build up resistance. Whole new approaches, like a universal flu vaccine, are also in the works. (
Bloomberg)
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AHRQ on the chopping block (again): The Administration’s proposed budget would eliminate 22 agencies and programs; among them is the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the agency tasked with producing evidence to make health care safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable and affordable. (
The Hill)
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Getting advice from peers when you’re facing a tough health problem is good for you, and studies show online community input is overwhelmingly accurate. According to this evidence-based video by Susannah Fox, former chief technology officer at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, patients find out they’re not alone, and that peers can help them find information faster because they’ve been there. (
Reframe Health peer health video)
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MarketVoices...quotes worth reading
"I was really the learner and he was the teacher." Sonia Ramamoorthy, MD, speaking about her treatment of patient (and applied computer engineering researcher) Larry Smarr, as quoted by
The Atlantic.
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Editor
Sandy Mau
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