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://ehrintelligence.com/news/hhs-strategy-aims-to-improve-patient-access-to-health-information
HHS Strategy Aims to Improve Patient Access to Health Information
The HHS Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2022-2026 focuses on improving payer, provider, and patient access to health information.
April 01, 2022 - The Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2022-2026 aligns with the 2020-2025 Federal Health IT Strategic Plan and focuses on improving patient access to health information, according to a HealthITBuzz blog post written by ONC official Lisa-Nicole Sarnowski.
HHS released the strategic plan earlier this week.
“We look forward to advancing the Plan, including the strategies to improve the access, exchange, and use of electronic health information for patients, providers, payers, and other health and healthcare stakeholders,” Sarnowski wrote.
Patient access to personal health information, such as lab results, physician notes, and diagnosis information, has grown significantly in recent years.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/cisa-warns-of-uninterruptible-power-supply-ups-device-cyberattacks
CISA Warns of Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) Device Cyberattacks
Threat actors deployed cyberattacks via uninterruptible power supply (UPS) devices, popular internet-connected devices used across a variety of sectors.
By Jill McKeon
April 01, 2022 - The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Department of Energy issued an advisory about cyberattacks committed via internet-connected uninterruptible power supply (UPS) devices.
CISA has observed threat actors gaining access to UPS devices through unchanged default usernames and passwords.
“UPS devices provide clean and emergency power in a variety of applications when normal input power sources are lost. Loads for UPSs can range from small (e.g., a few servers) to large (e.g., a building) to massive (e.g., a data center),” the advisory explained.
“Various different groups within an organization could have responsibility for UPSs, including but not limited to IT, building operations, industrial maintenance, or even third-party contract monitoring service vendors.”
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accuRx launches tool which provides instant access to GP record summary
A new solution that allows NHS healthcare professionals to request and instantly view a summary of GP medical records with the patient’s explicit permission is currently being piloted across a handful of Integrated Care Systems (ICSs).
Hanna Crouch 23 Mar 2022
accuRx’s Record View, which is currently in use across four ICSs, works by healthcare professionals logging in to the company’s platform, searching for their patient via its integration with the Personal Demographics Service (PDS), and then requesting permission from the patient to view a summary of their GP medical record.
Once requested, the patient receives a single-use 6-digit code in an SMS to the phone number listed on their GP record. The patient can then choose to share the code with the healthcare professional.
The healthcare professional will need to enter the code given by their patient in order to view the record summary. The summary remains accessible for 24 hours, after which the permission would need to be sought from the patient again and a new code generated and shared.
New way of working
One clinician who has been using the technology is Mark Loveder, who is a clinical psychologist at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, working in the weight management service and the bariatric surgery service. For Loveder, the introduction of Record View has been a useful tool for him as the trust moved towards a blended mix of face-to-face and virtual working following the Covid-19 pandemic.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2022/04/01/making-virtual-at-home-lab-testing-a-reality/
Making Virtual At Home Lab Testing a Reality
April 1, 2022
Healthcare is continuing its march towards remote monitoring (RPM) patients. Whether this was necessitated by the pandemic, new technology made it possible, or studies that show that patients do better at home, there’s a confluence of changes and technology that are making remote patient monitoring a reality.
While the move to RPM is accelerating, there’s still often a need for one of the highest quality forms of health monitoring data: lab results. Prior to COVID, there was a need for at home lab tests, but not many patients had experienced it and were therefore leery of it. One of the great things that’s come out of COVID was the acceptance of at home lab testing. At this point, a large portion of the population has done some sort of at home lab testing and is now very comfortable with it, which provides a tremendous opportunity for healthcare.
Of course, just because patients are now more accepting of at home tests doesn’t mean healthcare organizations can just flip a switch and start offering that as a solution. There’s a whole infrastructure and logistics that’s required to collect, receive, and process these at home lab tests. Not to mention the need for a network of CLIA certified labs that may be required in multiple states to process the results.
At the HIMSS conference, I had a chance to interview Pouria Sanae, Co-founder and CEO at ixlayer, to learn about their solution to this problem. ixlayer provides a white labeled at home lab testing solution for payers, provider organizations, biopharma, governments, employers, population health programs, and retail organizations.
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Small Healthcare Practices More Vulnerable to Data Breaches, Cyberattacks
Just Under 50 percent of small healthcare organizations and 15 percent of large practices reported not having a plan of action in the event of a data breach, a survey found.
By Jill McKeon
March 31, 2022 - Over 20 percent of small healthcare organizations surveyed by Software Advice reported experiencing a data breach. However, 46 percent of those breaches could be blamed on human error. The survey results revealed that as healthcare cyberattacks and data breaches increase, too many healthcare organizations remain unprepared.
The survey also found that 42 percent of small practices and 25 percent of large practices spent no more than two hours on data privacy and security training in 2021. Meanwhile, a third of large practices reported experiencing a data breach within the last three years, and 51 percent of those breaches were caused by human error.
Software Advice defined a small healthcare organization as a practice with five or fewer licensed providers. Large practices had six or more providers.
“Technology is an incredible tool that has improved the quality of medical care delivered and even saved lives. But increased adoption does have a downside: namely, the vulnerability it creates for sensitive data and increased risk of things like identity theft and credit fraud for patients and ransomware attacks for practices,” the report stated.
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Can clinicians make full use of patient-generated data?
EHR systems have the capacity to take data in and integrate it with clinical information, but questions surround its quality and clinicians’ capacity to use it.
Mar 31 2022
Editor-in-Chief, HDM
Healthcare organizations have increasing capacity to take in medical information and data from patients into their medical records systems, giving clinicians new opportunities and challenges in using it. Opportunities exist to use this information to improve patient care, but unless such patient-generated health data is organized and managed, it could remain unused or, worse, swamp already overburdened clinicians with too much information.
“Pathways for data from devices or surveys to be brought securely into the EHR are increasing,”
Presenters at last week’s Informatics Summit, held by the American Medical Informatics Association in Chicago, focused on the capacity of records systems to ingest patient-generated health data (PGHD) and how it is already paying some benefits in isolated efforts to improve patient care. Medical devices – ranging from personally owned fitness monitors and watches, to connected medical scales and monitors – as well as patient-recorded data, notes and observations are viewed by many as providing a more well-rounded view of a patient’s condition outside of traditional healthcare encounters. However, questions remain about whether such data is valid and should be intermingled with clinician-based information in electronic health records systems.
EHR systems can handle it
There’s no question that some of the largest vendors of EHR systems can take in this data, noted Ryan Shaw, an associate professor at Duke University who conducted a survey of nine large ambulatory care EHR vendors about their systems’ capacity to integrate PGHD into their systems. Of those, six responded, representing 80 percent of the EHR systems in use in clinicians’ offices, Shaw says.
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Scribe support may help alleviate documentation, trim physician burnout
A pilot project at UW Health used virtual assistance to assist clinicians and shows the potential to enhance revenue while giving doctors some relief.
Mar 31 2022
Editor-in-Chief, HDM
Ever since the inception of electronic health records, the actual act of documentation has weighed heavily on the clinicians using EHR systems. Requirements for compliance, quality reporting and claims have pushed clinicians to spend even more time in front of computer screens to complete notes and insert codes in patients’ records - detracting from patient interactions and cutting into physicians’ personal time. That’s a recipe for job dissatisfaction and burnout, which has been quantified by studies cited by the American Medical Association, which found that family physicians were working 11.4-hour days, of which 5.9 hours were spent in the EHR. In fact, the top four factors that physicians relate to job dissatisfaction and burnout are related to EHRs, the AMA reports.
A more recent study by athenahealth cited EHR documentation as a contributor to burnout. That study notes that organizational culture affects documentation and patient loads, and the pandemic has amplified the digital workload that clinicians are feeling.
The cost of turnover
With the increased focus on physician overload and burnout, hospital executives are looking to adjust strategies for eliminating extraneous pressure on clinicians. Retaining clinical staff is becoming a strategic imperative because vacancies negatively impact the ability to deliver care. And the AMA estimates that the cost of recruiting and replacing a physician is $500,000 to more than $1 million.
The COVID-19 pandemic has only increased challenges related to physician workloads and burnout. A report by KLAS Research, conducted through its Arch Collaborative, found that the pandemic was increasingly cited as a reason for rising burnout rates among clinicians,
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Telehealth Seems To Have Boosted Uptake of Mental Health Services
March 31, 2022
New survey results suggest that the availability of telehealth-based mental health services — and the high level of mental health symptoms Americans experienced during the pandemic — led more consumers to seek mental health care online than ever before during 2021.
The study, which was conducted by ZocDoc, draws on data tracking mental health appointment booking trends between January 2021 and January 2022. It showed that in 2020, as the pandemic began to crest, more than 42% of US adults reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, a striking increase of 93% over the previous year.
Demand for mental health services grew 11% year-over-year between 2019 and 2020, and a staggering 77% year-over-year between 2020 and 2021.
Virtual services seem to be the engine driving much of this growth. During the period studied by ZocDoc, virtual mental health specialty bookings grew by 74%. And by January 2022, 88% of mental health specialty bookings were virtual, researchers concluded. To put this in context, just 10% of bookings outside of mental health were virtual as of January 2022.
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Digital Health Tech, New Strategies Improve Medication Management
Analysis | By Eric Wicklund | March 29, 2022
Health systems like Magnolia Regional Health Center are boosting patient engagement and reducing wasted prescriptions with new services at the point of care.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Roughly two-thirds of people with at least $250 in prescription expenses in a year aren't taking their prescribed medications or aren't filling them, leading to wasted healthcare costs and reduced clinical outcomes.
· New strategies in patient engagement and digital health tools that improve clinical decision support are helping care providers work with patients at the point of care to improve medication management.
· These strategies and tools help providers improve care management, while helping patients improve clinical outcomes and giving pharma a better look at whether drugs are working. They're also becoming an attractive benefit for health plans.
Medication adherence is a significant pain point for healthcare providers, contributing to wasteful expenses, physician stress, and reduced clinical outcomes. Some health systems are turning to digital health technology not only to help patients take prescribed medications, but to make sure those drugs are the most appropriate and economical.
At Magnolia Regional Health Center in Corinth, Mississippi, clinicians are using a digital tool developed by DrFirst within their Meditech EHR to identify prescription benefits and therapeutic alternatives (ranging from other treatments to lower-priced generic medications) with patients at the point of care. The myBenefitCheck tool enables clinicians to reduce the chances of a patient deciding not to fill a prescription or follow dosing instructions.
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Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities – An Opportunity for Improved Care Coordination
Seth Pazinski; Lauren Richie and Kim Lundberg | March 29, 2022
March is Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month, a time to raise awareness about the inclusion of people with developmental disabilities in all aspects of community life, as well as awareness of the barriers that people with disabilities still sometime face in connecting to the communities in which they live. ONC works to ensure that health IT improves the health and health care of all Americans, including vulnerable populations such as those with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Three key ONC priorities – health equity, care coordination, and information sharing – are critical to this community.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), IDD are a group of conditions due to an impairment in physical, learning, language, or behavior areas such as:
- Autism spectrum disorders
- Cerebral palsy
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
- Learning or intellectual disabilities
- Hearing loss
- Vision impairment
- Other developmental delays
These conditions begin during the developmental period, may impact day-to-day functioning, and usually last throughout a person’s lifetime.
Opportunity for Improved Care Coordination
Well-coordinated care across both health and social sectors is imperative for individuals with IDD, a complex population that experiences poorer health and has higher rates of emergency department use and hospitalization due to ambulatory care–sensitive conditions.
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Physicians Eager to Help Address Patients’ Social Drivers of Health
Analysis | By Christopher Cheney | March 25, 2022
Despite willingness to address social drivers of health, two-thirds of physicians report inadequate time or ability to act, according to a new survey report.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Nearly all physicians reported that at least one social driver of health affected the health outcomes of all or some their patients.
· Financial instability (34% of patients) and transportation problems (24% of patients) were the top two social drivers of health experienced by physicians’ patients.
· A solid majority of physicians (80%) reported that addressing social drivers of health is essential to improve health outcomes and decrease healthcare costs.
Physicians view social drivers of health (SDOH) as critically important in the health of their patients and they want to do more to help address SDOH, a new survey report has found.
SDOH such as food insecurity, housing instability, and transportation problems can have a pivotal impact on health outcomes, with a far greater effect than clinical care alone. “Physicians know that reducing total cost of care and achieving health equity are only achievable by addressing SDOH. Despite the well-documented impact of SDOH on health outcomes and costs of care, our current healthcare system does not operate in a way that includes addressing them,” the new survey report says.
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HHS OIG: 2 in 5 Medicare beneficiaries used telehealth during first pandemic year
Analyst John Gordon sheds some light on a new study examining virtual care use among Medicare beneficiaries from March 1, 2020, to February 28, 2021.
By Kat Jercich
March 30, 2022 10:52 AM
This past month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General released a study examining how Medicare beneficiaries used telehealth during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
By analyzing Medicare fee-for-service claims data and Medicare Advantage encounter data from March 1, 2020, to February 28, 2021, along with those from the same period the year prior, the agency calculated the total number of services used via telehealth and in-person, as well as the types of services used.
"Telehealth was critical for providing services to Medicare beneficiaries during the first year of the pandemic," read the report. "Beneficiaries’ use of telehealth during the pandemic also demonstrates the long-term potential of telehealth to increase access to healthcare."
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/emea/three-lessons-prepare-next-pandemic
Three lessons to prepare for the 'next pandemic'
Speaking at the World Government Summit 2022, WHO’s Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reiterated that the COVID-19 pandemic won’t be “the last” one the world faces. However, the global healthcare community can work together to better prepare for the future.
March 30, 2022 12:47 PM
The Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has called for the global healthcare community to embrace technology to prevent future pandemics. He warned, however, that employing advanced healthcare systems won’t be sustainable if they are not resilient and able to withstand major threats going forward.
Speaking at the World Government Summit 2022 in Dubai via video link today, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reiterated that the COVID-19 pandemic won’t be “the last” one the world faces. However, governments can work together to better prepare for any possible ones in the future.
“It’s certain that COVID-19 won't be the last pandemic, but how likely is it to occur? And how much damage [will it] cause when it does?,” he asked. “Those are areas over which we have influence. We must learn the lessons of this pandemic.”
THE LARGER CONTEXT
In his remarks, Ghebreyesus offered three recommendations to governments and healthcare sectors going forward, the first of which is to embrace new technology to ensure fairer production and distribution of vaccines.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/wedi-onc-health-it-certification-should-require-epa-data-exchange
WEDI: ONC Health IT Certification Should Require ePA Data Exchange
In a letter responding to an ONC request for information, WEDI gave several recommendations on transitioning the industry to ePA data exchange.
March 29, 2022 - The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) recently submitted a letter responding to an ONC electronic prior authorization (ePA) request for information, noting that the ePA component of the ONC Health IT certification program should be mandatory.
The letter, written by Nancy Spector, WEDI chair, gives several recommendations for ONC to help guide a transition to automated prior authorization.
“Meeting the goals of the expected future ONC and the Centers for Medicare & Medicare (CMS) prior authorization proposed rules require that relevant stakeholders have ready access to several key capabilities and functions,” Spector wrote.
“Providers must know whether payers require prior authorization for a service, and they must know what information is required by the payer to adjudicate the request,” she added. “It is important to focus first on making these criteria as widely available and useful as possible, even if multiple approaches may be necessary.”
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Privacy group issues warning about danger to patient information
March 26, 2022
Allowing unregulated apps to access patient health information could expose patient information to those it wasn’t intended for
The Confidentiality Coalition and the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange sent a letter to the Commerce and HHS Secretaries outlining their concerns with allowing unregulated third-party apps to get access to patient health information.
The Confidentiality Coalition is composed of a broad group of hospitals, medical teaching colleges, health plans, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, vendors of electronic health records, biotech firms, employers, health product distributors, pharmacies, pharmacy benefit managers, health information and research organizations, patient groups, and others founded to advance effective patient confidentiality protections.
While the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act safeguards a specific subset of “protected health information,” the law applies only to traditional health care covered entities (CEs) and their business associates. A vast amount of health-related information does not fall within the HIPAA regulatory framework and is largely unprotected from misuse.
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Oracle’s purchase of Cerner highlights rapid shift to the cloud
The purchase underscores rapid movement of healthcare applications to cloud environments, but transitioning Cerner to the cloud will take time.
Mar 29 2022
Editor-in-Chief, HDM
With Oracle’s $28.3 billion acquisition of Cerner, many industry experts have described the deal as a tipping point for the use of the cloud in healthcare. However, the agreement is more likely a lagging indicator in a market that began to shift rapidly toward the use of the cloud years ago.
Market analyst firm ResearchandMarkets predicts that the global healthcare cloud infrastructure market will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 16.7 percent over the next few years and is estimated to reach $142 billion by 2028.
“Forward-thinking CIOs need to embrace the cloud,” says healthcare executive David Chou. “Right now, we see only point solutions, but by using the cloud, health system CIOs can explore their options and get the broader-based solutions they need.”
In announcing the deal, Oracle said that it expects to see Cerner servers running on the Oracle Gen2 Cloud, which will be available round-the-clock every day, with the goal being to eliminate unplanned downtime in the medical environment.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/hackensack-meridian-health-shows-benefits-telepsychiatry
Hackensack Meridian Health shows the benefits of telepsychiatry
In the fourth quarter of 2021, there were 4,024 in-person visits and 6,726 telehealth visits, accounting for 62.57% of visits, demonstrating the need for and impact of the program.
By Bill Siwicki
March 29, 2022 11:44 AM
Addressing the increasing need for behavioral health services is a nationwide challenge. With a shortage of physicians to address the growing need for care, a lack of providers who accept Medicaid, and access issues due to transportation or office hour challenges, healthcare organizations are looking to technology to help bridge the gap.
"Without the utilization of telehealth, patients arriving at an emergency department often have long wait times before meeting with an available physician, creating a strain on social workers and other members of the behavioral healthcare teams inside hospitals," said Dr. Eric C. Alcera, network medical director/Hackensack Meridian Behavioral Health, and chief medical officer at Preferred Behavioral Health Group, among other positions.
Expediting treatment time
"The implementation of a telepsychiatry program expedites the treatment time for a patient presenting in the emergency department in crisis," he continued. "Utilizing a Chromebook and HIPAA-compliant communications platform such as Zoom or Google Meets, team members can reach a Hackensack Meridian Health psychiatrist who can diagnose, prescribe and provide recommendations on next steps for patients."
The implementation of the telepsychiatry program has been a tremendous asset for the health system in getting patients in need of immediate behavioral health treatment access to a physician.
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Latest HIMSS report features APAC digital health transformation stories during COVID-19
One area of this case study compilation covers organisations that have leveraged HIMSS' digital tools in their transformation journeys.
By Adam Ang
March 29, 2022 04:16 AM
HIMSS has recently published a report that looks into the digital transformation journeys of Asia-Pacific health organisations during the ongoing pandemic.
Their notable efforts are covered in the first volume of the quarterly Digital Excellence in Healthcare: APAC Case Studies series.
This inaugural series has two areas of focus. In one area, it places a spotlight on organisations that have leveraged HIMSS' evidence-based models and frameworks in their transformation journeys.
Case studies include Queensland Health in Australia and Korea University Anam Hospital in South Korea, which were previously reported to have used the HIMSS Digital Health Indicator to comprehensively assess their digital systems.
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Revolutionary, chaotic or stagnating? The future of digital tech in health and care in the UK
Despite significant investment and well over a decade of different transformation plans and initiatives, there’s still much to do before we can say the health and care system has truly gone through a digital revolution.
March 29, 2022 08:11 AM
It is inarguable that the process of change has already started, and the seeds we are planting now will determine the future of digital health and care. It’s difficult, perhaps impossible, to predict the future especially considering the health and care system is complex. I’ve been wrestling with some questions to look deeper at the seeds being sown and so try and understand where digital health and care is heading.
Is the development of digital tools being driven by the needs of staff and patients?
If users (staff and patients) don’t drive the selection and use of new digital tools, it’s likely these tools will not solve the key problems facing the health and care system and they may not fit workflows, creating inefficiencies and duplication. Currently, at best, a small subset of users are involved in selecting new digital tools. This means only a subset of user priorities are driving technology selection, making it unlikely solutions will fully address user needs. If the technology selected does not work for users, time and effort goes into developing workarounds, adding more complexity to workflows and cognitive burden.
Are we developing digital tools that makes life easier, better and more effective for patients and staff?
For digital technologies to be the go-to solution they need to work well for all staff and patients. This also creates a culture more readily accepting of an increased use of digital technologies. Currently persistent basic problems mean there’s high levels of continued dissatisfaction with digital technology. This can perpetuate a reluctance to engage in digital change.
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The Healthcare AI Project That Experts Said Wasn’t Possible
March 29, 2022
While at the HIMSS 2022 conference, I sat down with Bob Rogers, AI Expert in Residence Center for Digital Health Innovation at UCSF, and Sri Ambati, CEO & Co-Founder at H2O.ai, to learn about a really interesting project that Rogers was working on at UCSF. When he started the project, he asked a number of experts about how to solve the problem and they said that it wasn’t possible. Rogers turned to H2O.ai and their Document AI solution to solve the problem.
To learn all about this project and some of UCSF’s efforts with AI, check out the interview below.
As Rogers and Ambati shared, this project was a real partnership between UCSF’s Center for Digital Health Innovation and H2O.ai. For anyone that’s done an AI or machine learning project, you know that these projects have to be a partnership. Unlike other health IT projects, AI is something that continues to learn and get better and therefore requires an ongoing relationship with a vendor to continually improve the results.
When you hear the outcomes Rogers describes in the video above, you can see why projects like this are so important. Plus, executing a successful AI project that actually improves patient outcomes and helps an organization become more efficient lights the fire for other people to use similar capabilities in new ways.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/fiscal-2023-budget-includes-1.8b-for-va-cerner-ehrm-project
Fiscal 2023 Budget Includes $1.8B for VA Cerner EHRM Project
If approved by lawmakers, the budget would provide VA with an additional $1.8 billion for its EHRM and $5.8 for the Office of Information Technology.
March 28, 2022 - The fiscal 2023 budget would provide the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) with an additional $1.8 billion for its Cerner EHR modernization (EHRM) project.
If approved by lawmakers, the budget would also provide VA's Office of Information Technology with an additional $5.8 billion to support cybersecurity, financial management transformation, claims automation, and the infrastructure readiness program, according to the White House.
The funding comes as VA wrestles with technical issues that have plagued the EHRM rollout.
On March 3, the department took the Cerner EHR system offline at VA's Mann-Grandstaff medical center in Spokane, Washington, after finding a technical defect in a software update.
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Project ECHO Program Cut Hospital Admissions Among Diabetics by 44%
The telementoring program operated by Rutgers medical school helped Medicaid patients with diabetes avoid hospitalizations, a new study shows.
By Anuja Vaidya
March 28, 2022 - A Project ECHO telementoring program that involved primary care providers resulted in a decrease in hospitalizations among Medicaid patients with diabetes, according to a new study.
Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a collaborative medical education and care management model that uses video technology to train and support providers. The goal is to increase access to specialty care in rural and underserved areas.
Published in Medical Care, the study evaluated one of the Project ECHO programs operated by Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS) that focuses on diabetes and other endocrine diseases, known as EndoECHO. The program enables participating primary care providers to learn and collaborate on diabetes care in a virtual space.
Working independently of the RWJMS Project ECHO team, researchers at Rutgers Center for State Health Policy examined five years of New Jersey Medicaid claims data to compare outcomes of 1,776 Medicaid patients who received care from 25 providers participating in the EndoECHO program with outcomes of 9,126 Medicaid patients who received care from 119 providers who did not participate in the program.
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/ocr-announces-four-hipaa-enforcement-actions
OCR Announces Four HIPAA Enforcement Actions
OCR announced four HIPAA enforcement actions, two of which stemmed from OCR’s HIPAA Right of Access Initiative.
By Jill McKeon
March 28, 2022 - The HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced four HIPAA enforcement actions to hold healthcare providers accountable for potential HIPAA violations. Two of the actions stemmed from OCR’s HIPAA Right of Access Initiative, bringing the total number of enforcement actions to 27 since the initiative began in 2019.
“Between the rising pace of breaches of unsecured protected health information and continued cyber security threats impacting the health care industry, it is critical that covered entities take their HIPAA compliance responsibilities seriously,” Lisa J. Pino, OCR’s director, stated in the announcement.
“OCR will continue our steadfast commitment to protect individuals’ health information privacy and security through enforcement, and we will pursue civil money penalties for violations that are not addressed.”
PA Doctor Agrees to Pay $30K to Settle HIPAA Right of Access Allegations
Donald Brockley, DDM, agreed to pay $30,000 and take corrective actions to resolve allegations of a HIPAA Right of Access failure. The solo dental practitioner, based in Butler, Pennsylvania, allegedly failed to provide a patient with a copy of their medical record.
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Mar 28, 2022,08:45am EDT|89 views
Four Strategies For Scaling Digital Health Solutions
Kal Patel, MD, is CEO and Co-Founder of BrightInsight. He has over 20 years of experience in pharma, medtech and regulated digital health.
Digital health is a new and challenging space for life sciences. The DTx Alliance’s best practices for digital therapeutics advise would-be developers to design products to optimize adoption, engagement and adherence within their target populations. That’s a worthy goal, but what does that look like in practice, and how does it differ among doctors, patients and hospital systems?
At the virtual 2022 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, a group of pharma and digital experts joined me to explore strategies for biopharma to scale patient and clinician adoption of digital health. These executives have experience with digital adoption at large companies that provide everything from pharmaceuticals to digital marketing. They offered the following valuable insights and lessons from their digital journey, particularly around accelerating adoption with patients and clinicians.
1. Partnerships are critical for achieving end-user engagement.
Launching a digital health product is different from rolling out a drug. Digital thrives in an ecosystem. To create this environment, partner with a variety of organizations, including technology companies, patient advocacy groups, providers and health systems, as well as integration partners that can help incorporate the physician workflow.
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https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/kevinmd/97880
The Myth of 'Physician Resistance' to EHRs
— Don't blame clinicians, blame the software design
by Leigh Wiley, RN March 26, 2022
I'm an RN and clinical informaticist. When I was studying health care informatics, I learned about physician resistance. The idea is that physicians are uniquely resistant to EHRs and health care information technology (HIT) apps. If only they went to more training or spent more of their limited time customizing their preferences, they would get the benefits of the EHR. For years, I believed this to be true.
Yet, I had difficulty reconciling this belief, knowing many physicians who openly embraced medical technology. Before going into informatics, I was an ICU and ER nurse at teaching hospitals. The doctors I worked with did not balk at new, innovative technology. Nor were they Luddites in their personal lives. They adeptly used innumerable apps to communicate or manage their lives. These same skills are integral to health information technology apps.
My first job in informatics was to implement EHRs. I traveled around the country, implementing solutions in a variety of settings. Rural, urban, community, teaching -- I saw it all. Regardless of the setting, I heard the same general complaints over and over again from physicians.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/value-integrating-person-and-virtual-care
The value of integrating in-person and virtual care
The retail industry with its e-commerce boom has lessons to teach healthcare, says an innovation leader at Teladoc Health.
By Bill Siwicki
March 28, 2022 11:20 AM
An array of disconnected, niche, point applications and ones that are not purpose-built for healthcare are fragmenting an already disjointed healthcare experience – and potentially marginalizing the role of local health systems in the lives of the communities they serve.
Some health systems see a need to unify their virtual care capabilities across an integrated platform, telemedicine vendor Teladoc Health observes. They seek to address health needs more personally and holistically – across complex care in the hospital, acute and primary care in the office or home, and chronic care and wellness everywhere, the company says.
Healthcare IT News interviewed Bruce Brandes, senior vice president of health system innovation at Teladoc Health, to talk about where telehealth is today, how in-person and virtual care integration may be the way to go, and what healthcare can learn from the retail industry.
Q. What is the state of telemedicine technology at hospitals and health systems today?
A. In the early days of the pandemic, every health system was forced to hastily deploy an array of tactical digital products for telemedicine to address immediate needs for episodic care.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/encryption-key-data-protection-not-all-strategies-look-alike
Encryption is key to data protection, but not all strategies look alike
Anurag Lal, CEO of NetSfere and former director of the U.S. National Broadband Task Force, says secure communication should be a top priority for organizations.
By Kat Jercich
March 28, 2022 11:37 AM
Cyber threats against healthcare organizations have been ramping up in the past few years, with highly publicized ransomware attacks leading to weeks-long network shutdowns at some institutions.
Experts warn that the situation may only worsen as bad actors become more sophisticated – and as some get a boost from state-sponsored entities.
Anurag Lal, CEO of NetSfere – which provides companies with security and message-delivery capabilities – caught up with Healthcare IT News to discuss what he sees as the most pressing cyber threat, how organizations can protect themselves and how his experience as director of the U.S. National Broadband Task Force helped shape his perspective on these issues.
Q. Why are healthcare organizations particularly vulnerable to attacks?
A. Healthcare organizations are more at risk for cyber threats for a number of reasons. One, their systems are typically outdated and slower, and less secure as a result. Additionally, the pandemic accelerated the digitization of the healthcare industry, and an estimated 93% of healthcare organizations experienced some sort of data breach over the past two years.
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British tech firm Faculty partners with NHS to forecast A&E admissions
The new AI tool is aimed to help tackle elective care backlog.
By Tammy Lovell
March 28, 2022 09:59 AM
A new A&E demand forecasting tool is being rolled out to 100 NHS acute trusts in England to help tackle waiting list backlogs.
The tool, co-developed with British artificial intelligence (AI) firm Faculty, utilises modelling techniques and machine learning technology to predict pressures from emergency demand. This allows frontline staff to make informed decisions on how to best plan.
Data sources on external factors, such as COVID-19, traffic, and public holidays, have been incorporated to improve the model’s accuracy, and there are aspirations to include other data sources such as weather in the future.
WHY IT MATTERS
The NHS is facing huge elective backlogs from the pandemic, with almost six million people in England waiting to start routine hospital treatment in November 2021.
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MEDITECH To Integrate Google Health Data Tools Into Its EHR
March 28, 2022
Recently, we shared news about the growing feature set under development as part of Google Health’s Care Studio, most recently its “Conditions” feature which summarizes patient conditions and uses NLP to link related information like labs or medications to those condition listings.
This week we learned that MEDITECH plans to embrace Care Studio, specifically by integrating its data harmonization, search and summarization capabilities into its Web-based MEDITECH Expanse EHR. The summarization tool will highlight critical information directly in the Expanse workflow including data from different sources into the MEDITECH EHR..
Google is using HL7 FHIR to support the data harmonization process, but in a blog entry on the subject, Google Health VP and general manager of Care Studio Paul Muret says that this is just an initial approach. “There is more to be done before FHIR is widely adopted and systems can effectively exchange information,” Muret wrote.
MEDITECH plans to use Google Health tools to form a longitudinal health data layer bringing data from different sources into a single standard format. This integration will include embedding Google Health’s search functionality into Expanse. The upgraded EHR will use Google Cloud’s infrastructure which had been an important partnership between Google Cloud and MEDITECH for years.
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https://www.businessinsider.com/valuable-telehealth-service-features
Valuable in-visit telehealth service features
28 July 2022
Primary care is the most common reason for a telehealth visit, but getting or renewing a prescription ranks second, according to our data. The two most valuable features focus on prescriptions, but also on the clinicians conducting the consultation.
And personalized care is key. Having a dedicated care team ranks almost as highly as prescription management—and likely matters most to patients with chronic conditions who need to contact the same care team. On the provider side, fulfilling this personalized approach takes careful coordination and scheduling to make sure the right professional, whether a physician, registered nurse, or physician's assistant, is available to see the patient or their caregiver.
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CMS Projection: Healthcare Spending Expected to Reach $6.8 Trillion by 2030
Analysis | By Christopher Cheney | March 28, 2022
Impact of coronavirus pandemic accelerated national health spending growth to 9.7% in 2020.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· In 2021, national health expenditure growth is expected to decline sharply to 4.2%, largely due to reductions in federal coronavirus relief funding.
· In 2022, national health expenditures are expected to increase at 4.6%, driven in part by higher healthcare prices linked to inflation in the economy.
· In 2021, hospital spending growth is expected to decline 0.7 percentage points to 5.7%. The primary reason for this drop in spending growth is a decrease in federal coronavirus relief funding.
National health expenditures are expected to be influenced significantly by the coronavirus pandemic from 2021 to 2024, then typical factors that drive changes in health spending such as demographics are expected influence spending trends from 2025 to 2030, a new analysis indicates.
The new analysis was conducted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Office of the Actuary. The analysis features expected annual health expenditures and projected hospital spending growth.
The analysis includes chronological healthcare expenditure projections.
- In 2020, unprecedented financial
stimulus from the federal government and insurance market upheaval drove
national health expenditure growth to a nearly two-decade high of 9.7%. In
2020, the health spending share of the gross domestic product (GDP)
increased 2.1 percentage points from 2019, to 19.7%.
- In 2021, national health expenditure
growth is expected to decline sharply to 4.2%, largely due to reductions
in federal coronavirus relief funding. The slower growth rate in
healthcare spending combined with growth in GDP, which rebounded to 9.6%,
is expected to result in a 0.9-percentage point drop in the healthcare
spending share of GDP to 18.8%. Healthcare spending is expected to total
$4.3 trillion.
- In 2022, national health
expenditures are expected to increase at 4.6%, driven in part by higher
healthcare prices linked to inflation in the economy. Healthcare spending
is expected to total $4.5 trillion.
- National health expenditures are
expected to increase 5.0% and 5.1% in 2023 and 2024, respectively. These
growth rates are tied to an expectation that patient care patterns will
return to prepandemic levels. From 2022 to 2024, healthcare spending’s
share of GDP is expected to be just over 18%.
- The healthcare spending impact of
the pandemic is expected to wane progressively from 2021 to 2024.
- From 2025 to 2030, traditional drivers of healthcare system trends such as economic, demographic, and health-specific factors are expected to return to prominence. During this period, healthcare spending is expected to increase at an average rate of 5.3% annually, reaching a total annual spending level of $6.8 trillion by 2030. Healthcare spending’s share of GDP is expected to be 19.6% in 2030.
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Enjoy!
David.
