Here are a few I came across last week.
Note: Each link is followed by a title and few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.
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https://www.digitalhealth.net/2020/07/experts-react-to-governments-u-turn-on-contact-tracing-app/
Experts react to government’s U-turn on contact-tracing app
The government should ensure ethics and privacy are “correct by design” in its new contact-tracing app, industry leaders have said.
Andrea Downey – July 2, 2020
Following the government’s decision to abandon its contact-tracing app in favour of Apple and Google’s technology, Digital Health News asked a number of experts what they thought of the U-turn.
The decision to switch to a decentralised model, working with Apple and Google to develop a companion style app, was largely seen as an opportunity for NHSX to get the design of its new app right.
Kathy Farndon, Vice-President of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, said: “A majority of BCS members reported in our May survey that they did not believe the proposed model would work as intended and had concerns about the reliance on a centralised database.
“The government now has the opportunity to work collaboratively, communicate clearly and show that ‘ethical and correct by design, and privacy by default’ values will be integral to any new version put before the public.”
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Autonomous robot targeting COVID-19 virus unveiled in Bahrain
The smart device, a prototype by Fab Lab Bahrain, reportedly uses UV-C light that kills or inactivates a range of microorganisms by disrupting their DNA or RNA.
July 03, 2020 09:30 AM
A “coronavirus-fighting” robot that has the ability to work autonomously around public spaces has been unveiled in Bahrain.Designed by Fab Lab Bahrain – in collaboration with the country’s Ministry of Youth and Sports Innovation Centre – the machine reportedly uses ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) to disinfect commonly used areas, such as an office space, for example.
UVGI is a known disinfection method that utilises short-wavelength ultraviolet C (UV-C) light to kill or inactivate a range of microorganisms by disrupting their DNA or RNA. This leaves them unable to perform vital cellular functions.
Coronaviruses are enveloped, single-stranded RNA viruses.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/how-a-hospital-optimized-its-ehr-dashboard-to-combat-covid-19
How a Hospital Optimized its EHR Dashboard to Combat COVID-19
A regional hospital in New Hampshire was able to work with its EHR dashboard vendor to successfully track COVID-19.
June 30, 2020 - When Concord Hospital implemented its EHR system in 2017, Paul Clark, MD, faced a challenge that disrupted the way the providers were getting patient information and ultimately patient care. Information overload clogged up the EHR dashboard, pushing Clark to consider EHR optimization.
“Providers were struggling a little bit to find information,” said Clark, who is the chief medical information officer at Concord Hospital. “They were jumping around to a lot of screens to get the information. So, we were trying to optimize the EHR system. But what became clear to us is that we would like something that was a little bit more agile in terms of making changes to deliver information to providers so it was more meaningful.”
In other words, Clark’s interactions with his EHR vendor weren’t quick enough, keeping the hospital from being able to pivot to different EHR optimization projects.
Once COVID-19 hit New Hampshire, Clark and Concord Hospital had a difficult time figuring out how they were going to track patients and the pandemic. Initially, the health IT team thought they would have to suffer through the previous burdensome, manual process to track patients.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/new-data-shows-heavy-ehr-adoption-investment-prior-to-hitech-act
New Data Shows Heavy EHR Adoption Investment Prior to HITECH Act
Researchers went back to the time the HITECH Act was passed to figure out whether or not the reported 9 percent EHR adoption rate painted the complete picture at the time.
July 01, 2020 - A new report published in the Journal of Informatics in Health and Biomedicine (JAMIA) is challenging the statistic that only 9 percent of hospitals had completed a basic EHR adoption by 2008, a key figure on which the 2009 HITECH act hinged.
In fact, 73 percent of hospitals had started EHR adoption in 2008, and the majority of hospitals had implemented six of the 10 basic EHR components. This mean, the number of hospitals beginning their EHR journey was far greater than the 9 percent figure that has been the original baseline for “basic” EHR adoption when crafting HITECH, the study authors argued.
More specifically, 30 percent of hospitals may have adopted a “basic” EHR and 58 percent of hospitals were on their way toward “basic” EHR adoption.
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Why Epic Systems Says Patient Portal Will Be Key in Virtual Care
Epic Systems predicts more health IT tools — especially the patient portal — will be integral as COVID-19 continues to revolutionize healthcare.
By Sara Heath
June 30, 2020 - When you drive up to your local CVS drive-thru window to get a COVID-19 test, the process is fairly simple. You fill out a quick registration page, receive your test, and get an activation code for the Epic Systems MyChart patient portal — if you aren’t already set up on the technology, that is.
The system is fairly elegant, helping to connect patients to the care and testing they need, keeping them distanced and out of the clinic, and delivering those crucial results as soon as possible on an easy-to-access format.
That’s not exactly par for the course in healthcare. Limited interoperability between EHR or patient portal systems have stunted efforts to coordinate care across different medical providers. Siloed healthcare can be frustrating for patients, not to mention fragmentation limits health outcomes.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/considering-ehr-documentation-strategies-in-pediatric-care
Considering EHR Documentation Strategies in Pediatric Care
Health IT developers are working on EHR documentation tools to decrease pediatrician burden and enhance patient care.
July 02, 2020 - Clinical documentation in pediatric care has changed dramatically since EHRs became more prevalent, leading to pediatrician burden, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Clinical EHR documentation was initially designed to record clinical information as provider notes in real-time during a consultation, assessment, imaging, or treatment, ultimately to share patient information among health providers.
While the transition from paper to EHR documentation has allowed for more accessible and legible notes, it is a primary cause of clinician burden due to information overload and larger amounts of text that is not always relevant to patient care.
EHR documentation tools force or send alerts to the clinician about required or forced fields. These interventions can result in clinician burden by increasing the length and decreasing the effectiveness of the notes, while also increasing the occurrence of inaccurate documentation.
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Jul 02 More on Telehealth
Telehealth is an important tool for rural hospitals in treating COVID-19, research shows
Despite the benefits, barriers remain in place, preventing the widespread, long-term use of the service.
Jeff Lagasse, Associate Editor
Rural hospitals are more likely than urban facilities to have access to telehealth, a once-underused service that now is playing a key role in treating COVID-19 patients, according to research by two health administration professors in Florida Atlantic University's College of Business.
Drs. Neeraj Puro and Scott Feyereisen say the research can help U.S. hospitals understand the extent to which they are prepared for another wave of the pandemic.
Having telehealth provides hospitals the ability to expand their service offerings in multiple ways. It has the potential, for example, to improve outcomes for high-risk obstetric patients in rural communities. And telehealth facilitated the use of antimicrobials in rural areas where infectious disease physicians were not available.
Still, barriers such as insurance restrictions and technology limitations remain in place, for now preventing the widespread, long-term use of the service. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has issued temporary waivers to ease some of these restrictions, but these waivers are expected to expire once the public health crisis has passed, with Congressional action required to enshrine more permanent change.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/europe/new-zealand-s-covid-crushing-effort
New Zealand’s COVID-crushing effort
The response by the New Zealand government to the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the crisis there under control. HIMSS Insights spoke to Shayne Hunter, deputy director general of data & digital at the New Zealand Ministry of Health, about their strategy.
By Lynne Minion
July 02, 2020 01:28 AM
On 8 June, as most nations continued to grapple with COVID-19, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced New Zealand no longer had any active cases of the virus. The country had recorded a total of 1,154 confirmed cases, including nine deaths, before it had ’eliminated’ the disease.
How vital has technology been in New Zealand’s response to COVID-19?
We have been able to maintain services while the bulk of the workforce is working and collaborating from home. This would not have been possible otherwise. Had this occurred five years ago it would have been a different story. We did have Skype but the advent of tools like Zoom and Teams, and the investment in moving to Cloud services along with high-speed internet, have been significant enablers.
Data was vital to supporting the management of COVID-19, be it in modelling, reporting, surveillance and contact tracing, etc.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2020/07/02/health-data-integration-must-be-for-the-whole-clinic/
Health Data Integration Must Be for the Whole Clinic
July 2, 2020
As health clinics, dentists, and specialists gradually reopen during what we hope is a reprieve from the first COVID-19 wave, lapses in effective data sharing come into glaring view. For instance, some friends told me that when they arrived at a clinic, the receptionist handed them paper forms and pens. The receptionist would say, “Just keep the pen. We don’t want it back–we’d just have to resanitize it.” And I thought, “Is this necessary in the year 2020?”
No, handing pens to patients shouldn’t be necessary. Digital data integration is crucial, not just to quash infections–because keypads are also a major vector for transmitting bugs–but to make sure that a prescription is ready when the patient leaves the office and walks to the pharmacy, and to prevent errors when a technician transfer vital signs from a monitor to the patient’s health record (EHR).
Health IT vendors, particularly since the passage of the 2009 HITECH Act, focus on integrating EHRs. But integration should really extend to every system in the clinic or hospital: billing, pharmacy, practice and workforce management, biometric stations that authenticate staff, and so on. As Josh Douglas, CTO of Bridge Connector, points out, the time spent by a patient in the doctor’s office is only a tiny part of their interaction with the entire health care system.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/predictive-analytics-tools-forecast-covid-19-surges-globally
Predictive Analytics Tools Forecast COVID-19 Surges Globally
Using data collected from around the world, researchers have built predictive analytics models that can track COVID-19 surges in different countries.
By Jessica Kent
June 29, 2020 - Researchers from Binghamton University, State University of New York have developed several predictive analytics models to examine COVID-19 trends and patterns around the world.
The machine learning algorithms analyze trends from the 50 countries that have the highest COVID-19 rates, including the US, and can often predict within a ten percent margin of error what will happen for the next three days based on data from the past 14 days.
“We believe that the past data encodes all of the necessary information,” said Anand Seetharam, assistant professor in the department of computer science at Binghamton University.
“These infections have spread because of measures that have been implemented or not implemented, and also because how some people have been adhering to restrictions or not. Different countries around the world have different levels of restrictions and socio-economic status.”
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Investors double down on health technology as funding reaches $9.1B in 2020
Jul 1, 2020 3:10pm
While the financial markets have taken a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, the health technology market continues to thrive.
After a record-breaking first quarter in digital health investment, the strong performance continued in the second quarter with investors sinking $4.2 billion into digital health, according to a report from investment firm Startup Health.
Total health innovation funding for the first half of 2020 hit $9.1 billion, up nearly 19% compared to $7.7 billion invested during the same period in 2019, the firm reported.
Startup Health looked at publicly available data through June 30 on seed, venture, corporate venture and private equity funding.
Funding in the second quarter of 2020 was down slightly compared to $4.4 billion in the second quarter of 2019. The first half of 2020 was buoyed by a surge in funding in January, which hit $2.2 billion before the COVID-19 health crisis impacted the U.S.
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https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cybersecurity-standard-iot-etsi/
30 Jun 2020 News
New Cybersecurity Standard for IoT Devices Established By ETSI
James Coker Reporter
A new standard for cybersecurity in the Internet of Things (IoT) has been unveiled today by the ETSI Technical Committee on Cybersecurity. It establishes a security baseline for internet-connected consumer products and for future IoT certification schemes. It is hoped the standard, titled ETSI EN 303 645, will help prevent large-scale, prevalent attacks taking place against smart devices.
Developed in collaboration with industry, academics and government, the standard aims to restrict the ability of cyber-criminals to control devices across the globe and launch DDoS attacks, mine cryptocurrency and spy on users in their own homes. This has become a major concern for the cybersecurity industry due to the growing prevalence of smart devices in households, many of which have security weaknesses.
Earlier this month, for example, an investigation by Which? found that 3.5 million wireless indoor security cameras across the world potentially have critical security flaws that make them vulnerable to hacking.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/orgs-with-high-opioid-prescribing-rates-lack-pdmp-ehr-integration
Orgs with High Opioid Prescribing Rates Lack PDMP EHR Integration
Only 22 percent of prescribers located within a high opioid prescribing area had PDMP EHR integration that allowed efficient prescribing oversight.
June 30, 2020 - Hospitals located in areas with high rates of opioid prescribing were less likely to have prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) integrated into the EHR, which limits the impact of PDMPs in these vital areas of the country, according to research published in JAMA Network Open.
A PDMP that is implemented into the EHR can decrease the strenuous process of checking the PDMP, which as a result, can reduce the cognitive workload and clinician burden.
However, EHR-integrated PDMPs are not particularly widespread.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/asia-pacific/overview-malaysia-s-digital-health-landscape
An overview of Malaysia’s digital health landscape
Digital health tools and investments offer great opportunity for efficiency improvements and better health outcomes in the country.
By Dean Koh
July 01, 2020 10:26 PM
Malaysia has a dual-tiered system of healthcare services: one led by the government and funded by taxpayers, and the other provided by the private sector. Like many other countries, the growing burden of non-communicable diseases is one of the most prominent threats to the financial sustainability of the current healthcare system.
As such, digital health tools and investment in digital solutions could help address some of the challenges of maintaining and growing Malaysia's healthcare services and ensuring quality, affordable and patient-centric healthcare.
Government and private initiatives
Launched in 2017 by the Ministry of Health, the Malaysian Health Data Warehouse (MyHDW) is a national healthcare information gathering and reporting system covering all government and private healthcare facilities and services. MyHDW includes a patient treatment information system (SMRP) and patient registry information system (PRIS).
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2020/07/01/securing-medical-devices-and-iot/
Securing Medical Devices and IoT
July 1, 2020
I know it’s easy to be distracted by COVID-19 right now, but it’s important to remember that many of the challenges we faced pre-COVID-19 are still around and need to be managed effectively even as we deal with the pandemic. One of those ongoing challenges is properly securing medical devices and IoT.
In fact, one could argue that this challenge has become even harder amidst COVID-19 as more IoT devices are being implemented in healthcare and the risk surface is increasing as we add more and more endpoints that can be exploited. Plus, it’s no news to anyone in healthcare that many medical and IoT devices weren’t designed with security in mind.
In order to better understand this problem and how a healthcare organization should be approaching it, we sat down with Renee Tarun, Deputy CISO at Fortinet and Michael Archuleta, CIO at BridgeCare Health Network – Mt San Rafael.
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/why-have-covid-19-racial-health-disparities-emerged
Why Have COVID-19 Racial Health Disparities Emerged?
COVID-19 racial health disparities are the result of a near-century of institutional health inequities.
By Sara Heath
June 29, 2020 - The racial health disparities that have emerged throughout the COVID-19 pandemic can be boiled down to three root causes: structural racism affecting patient access to care, high occurrence of chronic disease, and economic inequalities leading marginalized populations to work high-risk jobs, according to Patrice Harris, MD, the immediate past president of the American Medical Association (AMA).
During a recent hearing on health and wealth inequality in American, held in the US House of Representatives, Harris joined other health and economic experts to outline how stark racial health disparities came to the forefront during the pandemic.
“As our nation confronts the dual crises of a deadly pandemic that has triggered joblessness unseen since the Great Depression, the pandemic has revealed starkly the disproportionate impact of the virus on minoritized and marginalized communities,” she said in her testimony.
“While the data remains incomplete, the data that have emerged on the racial and ethnic patterns of the COVID-19 pandemic show that the virus has clearly disproportionately affected Black and Latinx, American Indian/Alaska Native—particularly in the Navajo nation—Asian-American, and Pacific Islander communities.”
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/ehr-usability-impacts-fellowship-education-clinician-burnout
EHR Usability Impacts Fellowship Education, Clinician Burnout
Just over half of physicians who are studying to become kidney specialists said EHR usability has had a positive impact on their education.
June 25, 2020 - EHRs aid physicians who are training to become kidney specialists from an educational standpoint. However, EHR time demands and data entry lead to physician burden for fellows, according to a study published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJSON).
Over the past decade, EHRs have shown to be a vital and volatile addition to healthcare systems across the country. But while there are a handful of benefits for EHR adoption and use, there is also a list of negatives that highly impact users and their relationships with patients.
“One unintended consequence is a potential deleterious effect on physician training, including limiting time with patients and mentors; perpetuation of erroneous information (data obfuscation) via pre-population, checkboxes, and copy forward; and superficial discussions and analysis of patient problems,” wrote the study authors.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/riskiest-healthcare-devices-pacs-hl7-gateway-radiotherapy-systems
Most At-Risk Medical Devices: PACS, HL7 Gateway, Radiotherapy Systems
Forescout finds 35 percent of healthcare workstations operate on unsupported versions of Windows, with PACS, HL7 Gateway and Radiotherapy Systems as some of the riskiest devices in the sector.
June 25, 2020 - More than 35 percent of the workstations used in healthcare are operating on unsupported versions of Windows, with Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) and HL7 gateway among the riskiest devices in the sector, according to a new Forescout Research Labs report.
The report comes on the heels of several Department of Homeland Security alerts regarding Ripple20 vulnerabilities in millions of medical devices, as well as critical flaws found in six medical device platforms.
For its Enterprise of Things Security Report, researchers assessed the risk posture of over 8 million devices across five sectors, healthcare, government, manufacturing, financial services, and retail using defined metrics and data from Forescout’s Device Cloud, one of the largest repositories of connected enterprise device data.
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Ransomware: Attacks that start with phishing emails are suddenly back in fashion again
Email was once the main method for delivering ransomware. Now familiar and new forms of ransomware are using it again.
By Danny Palmer | June 29, 2020 -- 12:03 GMT (22:03 AEST) | Topic: Security
Ransomware attacks via email are on the rise again, with several new and familiar forms of ransomware recently being distributed with the aid of malicious payloads in phishing messages.
Email used to be the most prolific way to infect victims with ransomware, but in recent years, attackers have successfully pivoted to using remote ports, insecure public-facing servers and other vulnerabilities in enterprise networks to encrypt entire networks – often demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars in payment to release the data again.
However, in recent weeks, researchers at Proofpoint have seen a rise in the number ransomware attacks being distributed by email – including one from a ransomware that hasn't been active in years – with crooks sending out hundreds of thousands of messages every day. The email attacks use a variety of lures to trick people into opening them, including subject lines related to coronavirus.
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https://hbr.org/2020/06/where-telemedicine-falls-short
Where Telemedicine Falls Short
June 30, 2020
Telehealth use has surged during the coronavirus pandemic, with the technology spreading far and fast. Doctors and patients alike must be wondering if this is the beginning of a whole new kind of doctor–patient relationship, one that might totally transform our health care system.
I’m not convinced, and Americans may not be either as the initial telehealth surge appears to be leveling off.
I am not skeptical because of the technology: I am a strong supporter of health information technology and believe new IT holds huge benefits for patients and their caregivers. Years ago, I helped lead the federal government’s effort to get hospitals and doctors to adopt electronic health records. Indeed, virtual care would be much less valuable if it weren’t for electronic records that enable doctors to access patients’ health histories remotely.
But I am also a primary care physician. I know that trusting relationships between patients and clinicians can be a boon to giving and receiving care. And that trust — the kind that lets anxious patients return to sleep at night, the kind that settles the stomach of a new mother with a sick baby — grows fastest and strongest through in-person relationships.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/europe/uk-rolls-out-ai-based-cancer-detection-nhs-patients
UK rolls out AI-based cancer detection for NHS patients
Ibex Medical Analytics and LDPath announce UK’s rollout of clinical grade AI applications for cancer detection in pathology.
By Sara Mageit
June 30, 2020 04:34 AM
Leader in AI-powered cancer diagnostics, Ibex Medical Analytics and provider of digital pathology services in the NHS, LDPath, have announced the UK’s first rollout of clinical grade AI application for cancer detection in pathology.
This platform will support pathologists in enhancing diagnostic accuracy and efficiency.
WHY IT MATTERS
Over the years, a global increase in cancer cases has coincided with a decline in the number of pathologists around the world.
Traditional pathology involves manual processes that have remained the same for years. These processes involve slides to be analysed by pathologists using microscopes, and reporting is often carried out on pieces of paper.
The limited availability of pathologists has required couriers to transport glass slides containing tissue samples between different locations to access expert opinions.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/europe/flattening-curve-virtual-care-australia
'Flattening the curve' with virtual care in Australia
When Paul Roseworn flew out on holiday to Ireland and the UK in February to watch the Six Nations Rugby, he didn’t realise he would be caught up in a global pandemic. But by the time he’d arrived back in Australia 3 weeks later, he'd contracted COVID-19.
By Lynne Minion
June 30, 2020 07:01 AM
I just had an inkling. It felt like a cold but slightly worse. There was something a bit off about it,” Roseworn told HIMSS Insights.
The 52-year-old company director was tested a day later and spent the next three and a half weeks “hospitalised” in his home thanks to the remote care provided by one of the nation’s major health facilities, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPA) in Sydney.
“There were a few days there where it felt like I had a weight sitting on my chest. I wasn’t wheezing, it just felt hard to expand my chest for a few days,” Roseworn, who is asthmatic, said. “And I had a pretty bad dry cough so it sounded antisocial.”
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2020/06/30/telehealth-only-doctors-and-medical-practices/
Telehealth Only Doctors and Medical Practices
June 30, 2020
The evolution and adoption of telehealth these past few months has been fascinating to watch. It illustrated many of the built in biases many healthcare organizations had towards in person visits. It also highlighted times when an in person visit is far superior to an online visit. While we’re starting to see a roll back to more in person visits with new social distancing, COVID-19 has certainly thrown the doors open to telehealth in a way that could have never been imagined possible 6 months ago.
Even before COVID-19, there were a number of direct to consumer telehealth companies who were offering telehealth options for a special set of visits. No doubt that’s exploded in the current environment and in many ways has started to compete with health systems for visits. I expect we’ll continue to see this area of telehealth to continue to grow as these direct to consumer companies can create a really convenient patient experience. Plus, we’ve got at least another year or more until people feel really comfortable going back to in person visits.
Along with these direct to consumer telehealth models, a massive number of telehealth companies are providing the tools and technology needed to provide doctors the opportunity to do telehealth on top of their existing medical practice. We’ve written a lot about this as many were forced to convert their scheduled appointments to online telehealth visits.
While both of these areas of the video telehealth visit are interesting, I wonder if there’s an opportunity here that I haven’t really seen before. Will we start to see telehealth only doctors and medical practices?
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2020/06/30/consumers-see-remote-monitoring-tech-positively/
Consumers See Remote Monitoring Tech Positively
June 30, 2020
A new survey has concluded that the vast majority of patients believe that remote monitoring of their condition can make a difference in their overall health.
The research was conducted by Sony’s mSafety Wearable Platform Division, whose mSafety platform helps healthcare organizations build remote monitoring applications. (For more background on the platform, check out this interview my colleague Andy Oram did with Sony Network Communications Europe’s Arnol Rios, who’s with subsidiary Takeoff Point Inc.)
To conduct the survey, Sony researchers reached out to more than 2,000 patients diagnosed with chronic conditions in the US.
The study found that one in three chronically ill patients responding to the survey have trouble tracking important health measurements such as vital signs. It also found that one in three felt stressed about the need to keep up with such efforts as well as the possibility of misreporting such statistics.
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Over 50% of Leaders Underwhelmed by Population Health Management Tech
A survey revealed that healthcare leaders want analytics and care coordination functionalities embedded in their population health management solutions.
By Jessica Kent
June 25, 2020 - Fifty-six percent of healthcare leaders say their current population health management solution doesn’t meet their needs, according to a survey from Persivia and commissioned by Sage Growth Partners.
Just 38 percent of respondents rated their population health solution as eight, nine or ten on a scale of one to ten, while 24 percent rated it a seven and 37 percent judged their solution to be a six or less.
The survey of 224 healthcare leaders was conducted in April 2020. Researchers found that only 41 percent are using a population health management (PHM) solution or participating in value-based care at all. The 59 percent not using PHM platforms or participating in value-based care were screened out of the remaining survey questions.
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CMS Moves to Make COVID-19 Home Health Telehealth Expansion Permanent
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is proposing to make telehealth coverage enacted during the COVID-19 crisis permanent for home health care providers - though providers still won't be reimbursed.
June 26, 2020 - Federal regulators are moving to permanently expand telehealth coverage for home health care services.
In a June 25 notice, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services unveiled a proposed rule to make permanent emergency rules enacted on March 30 to address the coronavirus pandemic. The proposed rule will be published in the Federal Register on June 30.
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, CMS enabled home healthcare providers to use connected health platforms to provide more services as long as those services are part of the patient’s care plan and they don’t replace needed in-person visits as ordered in the original care plan.
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https://www.aappublications.org/news/2020/06/29/edocumentation062920
Electronic documentation guidance aims to prioritize values, reduce burden
M.D., M.Sc., FAAP
· AAP Policy
· AAP Technical Report
Much has changed in the way pediatricians document care, including the transition to electronic health records (EHRs) and the changing stakeholders, policies and regulations regarding clinical documentation. For many, these shifts have altered the content, structure and even the perceived purpose of clinical documentation.
While electronic documentation has improved information availability and legibility, new problems have been introduced, including documentation burden, “note bloat” and information overload. These issues have necessitated reexamining documentation priorities and requirements.
Pediatrics is a unique specialty in many ways, involving both patients and their families. Additional stakeholders in clinical documentation include schools, as teachers and school nurses serve as important caregivers for children and adolescents. In some states, teens have the right to consent to their own care in certain situations and might want to keep that information confidential from parents or guardians.
Thus, a new AAP policy statement and technical report provide guidance that aims to drive electronic documentation improvement initiatives. The goal is to maximize the benefits of electronic documentation and functionalities while mitigating their potential negative aspects.
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https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/933065
Outpatient Diagnostic Delays Linked to EHR Usage, Design Flaws
Ken Terry
June 26, 2020
Health information technology (HIT) is implicated in many of the missed test result follow-ups that lead to outpatient diagnostic delays, according to a new study of root cause analysis (RCA) data from the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Such delays have been shown to threaten patient safety by causing the treatment of serious conditions such as lung and breast cancer to be postponed.
Whereas computer hardware and software issues were responsible for some of these errors, most safety concerns involved "sociotechnical factors" associated with people, workflow and communication, and a poorly designed human-computer interface.
The five key high-risk areas for diagnostic delays were managing electronic health record (EHR) inbox notifications and communication, clinicians gathering key diagnostic information, technical problems, data entry problems, and the failure of a system to track test results.
Lauren Powell, MD, MBA, and colleagues published findings from their retrospective cohort study online June 25 in JAMA Network Open.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/ucsf-pays-114-million-decrypt-files-after-ransomware-attack
UCSF pays $1.14 million to decrypt files after ransomware attack
The medical school was hit by an opportunistic malware attack on June 1, and the encrypted data was "important to some of the academic work we pursue as a university serving the public good," officials said.
By Mike Miliard
June 29, 2020 04:02 PM
UCSF on Friday announced that it had "made the difficult decision" to pay a $1.14 million ransom and unlock the important data that had been encrypted in a ransomware attack earlier this month.
WHY IT
MATTERS
On June 3, IT staff at UCSF School of Medicine detected a security incident
that had occurred two days earlier, said school officials in a statement.
"We quarantined several IT systems within the School of Medicine as a safety measure, and we successfully isolated the incident from the core UCSF network. Importantly, this incident did not affect our patient care delivery operations, overall campus network, or COVID-19 work," officials noted.
Even as that attack was stopped, however, the perpetrators launched a malware program that encrypted some servers. UCSF officials note that IT and security staff have been working with an outside consultant and hope to restore access to the servers and shore up its defenses in general.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/after-initial-spike-telehealth-visits-are-decline-report-finds
After initial spike, telehealth visits are on the decline, report finds
Data from 50,000 healthcare providers suggests that ambulatory practice visits have not rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.
By Kat Jercich
June 29, 2020 01:50 PM
A new report from the Commonwealth Fund found a "plateau" in the growth of telemedicine visits, accounting for a relatively small percentage of rebounding ambulatory care services.
As states experiment with reopening – and re-closing – their economies in response to concerns around coronavirus, continuing attention has been paid to skyrocketing rates of telehealth visits.
But the report found that telemedicine visits have actually been declining since April, suggesting that health providers are still finding the best ways to provide virtual services.
"Telemedicine cannot replace all types of visits – for instance, in-person visits are still necessary to diagnose and test certain complex conditions," said Commonwealth Fund SVP for policy and research Dr. Eric C. Schneider and VP for delivery system reform Tanya Shah in a blog post accompanying the report.
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https://histalk2.com/2020/06/26/weekender-6-26-20/
Weekly News Recap
- Kaufman Hall spins off its enterprise performance management software division as Syntellis Performance Solutions.
- Public health officials in Austin, TX blame COVID-19 case counts that vary wildly by day on labs that are sending test results by fax.
- The American Hospital Association loses its bid to stop the federal government from requiring hospitals and insurers to publish their negotiated prices, but will appeal.
- Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative shuts down after 15 years.
- CMS begins publishing a monthly Medicare COVID-19 Data Snapshot.
- CMS announces the creation of CMS’s Office of Burden Reduction and Health Informatics.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin calls for the healthcare system there to roll out out digital systems and to use artificial intelligence.
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Enjoy!
David.
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