21st Century Cures headed for Thursday vote — Updated interoperability roadmap due soon — #DataIndependenceDay celebrated

With help from Darius Tahir (@DariusTahir )

DRIVING THE WEEK: The 21st Century Cures Act is likely to come to the full House for a vote on Thursday; the Rules Committee is set to meet on the bill at 3 p.m. Wednesday. The bill’s final language was posted last Thursday, with few changes or surprises for the ehealth world. The FDA can now spend some of $550 million under the bill to implement the SOFTWARE Act. That wasn’t possible in previous iterations of the bill. Other changes in the final version here: http://1.usa.gov/1JPFCb4

With the House’s work on interoperability done for the time being, full attention can now be turned to the Senate and the HELP Committee. Not clear yet how lawmakers there will handle the issue. To date they have focused on EHR usage issues and regulations around meaningful use. But several senators, including HELP Committee Chair Lamar Alexander, have said they see legislation as a third option behind letting the private sector correct problems, or regulation.

UPDATED INTEROPERABILITY ROADMAP THIS WEEK?: ONC may also release an updated version of its 10-year roadmap as soon as this week, Morning eHealth hears. The draft version was first published in late January with comments due in early April. After reviewing roughly 250 comments, ONC had promised to issue a revised document later this year. This week could be it. We’ll be on the lookout.

eHealth tweet of the day: @NIHDirector I will request my health records & share that experience. Need #GetMyHealthData #DataIndependenceDay to work for #pminetwork to succeed

Welcome to Monday morning eHealth where your author is getting back in the swing of things after a weeklong vacation. What did I miss? Seriously, I am still making my way through emails, but drop me a line if you have something to share. I’m at [email protected] and connect with us on Twitter @ David_Pittman, @ arthurallen202, @ DariusTahir @ POLITICOPro, @ Morning_eHealth.

JULY 4TH IS ALSO #DataIndependenceDay: The “Data Liberation” campaigners fired their first “tracer” shots over the long weekend, with a manifesto from movement leader Farzad Motashari. It’s part of an effort to allow and encourage patients to access their medical records. The “tracers” are test pilots, of sorts, intended to see where the difficulties are in obtaining data from the health care system. As the name suggests, these early shots may be followed by full-scale insurrection in the months to come.

— Mostashari’s manifesto won the social media endorsement of several prominent folks outside the health IT sphere — such as New Yorker essayist/physician Atul Gawande, former FTC economist Martin Gaynor and Yale cardiologist Harlan Krumholz. Yet it appears that while the movement has won the hearts and minds of the intelligentsia, it hasn’t spread to the masses yet. The campaign’s headquarters — @GetMyHealthData — only has 573 followers as of this writing. Social media does have some interesting tales to tell from the front lines: for example, a nurse who says she paid $40 to get her records mailed to her.

— Former ONC official Rebecca Coelius said in a tweet over the weekend that the Data Liberation movement plans to publish results of their requests.

A separate tale of struggles to access records was penned by health IT guru Brian Ahier, who suffered a heart attack in Boston last month. On release from an elite hospital there, he requested an electronic copy of his records but was asked to fax a written request to the hospital and wait up to 60 days. “The only way to export [my records] from [their patient] portal is to use the print option. There is no option to save this information to another document/system. Also, your complete medical record is not available on the portal,” writes Ahier. He had to piece together his incomplete record for his doctors back home in Oregon, which they had to scan into their EHRs. His story: http://bit.ly/1G2act5

TELEMEDICINE BILL TO BE REINTRODUCED: California Rep. Mike Thompson is expected to refile his Medicare Health Parity Act this week. The bill he first dropped last year would allow all federally qualified health centers to be paid for telemedicine along with remote monitoring of patients with chronic disease. We’ll be on the look out to see what this version of the bill brings.

ALSO EXPECTED THIS WEEK: CMS should release its proposed rule around the 2016 physician fee schedule, outlining how it plans to pay doctors in the coming year. The rule also brings the likely possibility of policy changes around health IT and telemedicine. Last year, CMS implemented Medicare’s chronic care management code and seven new telemedicine codes. Stay tuned to what CMS has to say on this issue.

MEDICARE TO PAY FOR END-OF-LIFE TALKS?: ”Advocates for better end-of-life care expect Medicare to soon announce that it will start paying physicians for having advanced-care planning conversations with patients,” Pro Health Care Editor Joanne Kenen reports. But that could also open the door for more “death panel” fears. The new policy could come in the annual Medicare physician payment rule. Pros get the story: http://politi.co/1G2HDeY

CMS HAILS ANOTHER ‘SUCCESSFUL’ ICD-10 TEST WEEK: CMS is out with more results from its latest ICD-10 acknowledgement testing week, this one from early June. The agency says 90 percent of the more than 13,000 submitted test claims were accepted and most rejections were unrelated to ICD-10. “The June acknowledgement testing week once again demonstrated that CMS systems are ready for ICD- 10,” CMS said in its results summary.

Meanwhile, the Coalition for ICD-10 published a long blog post against the physician lobby’s call for an ICD-10 “grace period,” during which CMS would accept less specific codes than the very granular variety that ICD-10 calls for. Bottom line: It’s a bad idea, the Coalition says. “Using less specific diagnosis codes is not ideal and adversely impact the quality of healthcare data, and so every effort should be made to capture the most complete clinical documentation to support the most specific code.” The blog post: http://bit.ly/1RVJHwm

HIE BAD FOR NEW MEXICANS: The Albuquerque Journal published an editorial denouncing the state’s effort to create a health information exchange. The reasons cited are familiar: Costs and sustainability, potential for error, hacking and stealing the data stored and re-identified data that has been stripped of personal information. The piece: http://bit.ly/1S1kZdY

PROTEUS DIGITAL HEALTH EXPANDS INDICATION: Proteus Digital Health can now officially market its devices as a method to track medication adherence, after receiving an update to its 510(k) last week. The company sells a variety of sensors — such as an ingestible pill or wearable patch — intended to track patients outside of the clinic. With the new indication, it can now track medication adherence, giving doctors and patients more insight into how medications affect treatment.

WHAT WE’RE CLICKING:

The Guardian profiles the family whose medical bills cost AOL $1 million: http://bit.ly/1fbs2Vw

The Mayo Clinic’s eICU making the case for Medicare payment: http://strib.mn/1S1ltke

Jonathan Bush: DIY disruption is the easiest way to innovate: http://tcrn.ch/1HFe2zB

Using cloud to disrupt urgent care: http://bit.ly/1IZzH0g

Doctorpreneurs: http://econ.st/1UcJ6u5

Sometimes, computers can spot depression when psychiatrists can’t: http://econ.st/1HzB6zJ

Kevin MD blogs about why today’s doctors shouldn’t dismiss telemedicine: http://bit.ly/1ew5oGz

Tips, comments, suggestions? Send them along via email to our team: Arthur Allen ( [email protected] , @ArthurAllen202 ), David Pittman ( [email protected] , @ David_Pittman), Darius Tahir ( [email protected] , (@DariusTahir ) and Aubree Eliza Weaver ( [email protected] , @AubreeEWeaver ).