Good news for remote monitoring reimbursement

With help from Arthur Allen (@arthurallen202) and Darius Tahir (@dariustahir)

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Morning eHealth will not publish on Wednesday, July 4. Our next Morning eHealth newsletter will publish on Thursday, July 5.

GOOD NEWS FOR REMOTE MONITORING REIMBURSEMENT: CMS proposed a rule that would expand reimbursement for remote patient monitoring by home health care providers by 2021, a move that could encourage patients to “share more live-time data” with providers, administrator Seema Verma said Monday.

The proposed rule would let home health agencies report remote patient monitoring to Medicare as an operating cost, factoring it into larger cost analyses and payment rates, Morning eHealth’s Arthur Allen reports. Remote monitoring might cover IT, medical devices and software, and labor, a CMS official told reporters Monday.

The proposed rule would also change payment units from 60 days to 30 days starting in January 2020. Read more on the rule here; Pros can see the rest of Arthur’s story here.

DIGITAL HEALTH INVESTMENTS SET TO OUTPACE LAST YEAR: If digital health investments sustain the growth they demonstrated in the first half of 2018, they’ll considerably outpace last year’s record, according to a new report from investors at Rock Health.

Digital health startups raised $3.4 billion in the first half of 2018, per Rock Health’s analysis. If they continue at the same rate for the rest of the year, they’ll top $6.9 billion, compared to $5.6 billion last year.

The forecast for digital health entrepreneurs isn’t totally sunny. The report says investors have been struggling to cash in on their equity, and there hasn’t been a digital health initial public offering since 2016. The annualized pace of acquisitions is down from the peak of 138 set in 2015 – on the current pace, 2018 will see 86 acquisitions. Pros can read the rest of the story from Morning eHealth’s Darius Tahir here.

...Speaking of digital health startups, there’s a special need for companies reenvisioning the transfer of data between patients and providers, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

CIO Rasu Shrestha tells Morning eHealth. Shrestha, who is also the Veterans Affairs Department’s API pledge lead, is executive vice president at UPMC Enterprises, the health group’s innovation hub that funds promising health tech ventures.

Clinicians generally rely on the data in patient EHRs to make diagnoses, and patients often gather their own health data from wearable devices – but “that data never makes it to the other side where the clinicians are,” Shrestha says. Some recent API projects – Apple, for instance, announced it would make health data available to developers – could help bridge the gap, he says. But “you have to have the right data flowing both ways, [and it] needs to be embedded into the workflow both for clinicians when they’re making decisions...and for the patients and consumers.”

ONC OFFERS $2 MILLION FOR PROVIDER IT PROJECTS: HHS’ health IT hub is creating a new grant fund for projects that could make it easier for providers to report quality data, Darius reports. ONC plans to dole out $2 million in two-year grants to project leaders who can create APIs facilitating population-level queries — a registry that could simply ask for all data related to certain types of patients without the need for specialized software, for instance. It’s also looking for developers to create software to inform providers of new academic knowledge — particularly related to precision medicine — at the point of care. Applications are due Aug. 17. More for Pros here.

eHealth Tweets of the day: Ira Brodsky @IraBrodsky Most innovation comes from creative individuals. Organizations, by nature, are more interested in self-preservation.

Gregg Masters MPH @2healthguru Replying to @IraBrodsky Ergo my question posited a few years ago as the ‘innovation’ angle became all the buzz in the calcified healthcare industry: Can innovation be ‘institutionalized’? - given the metastasis of innovation centers both tethered and untethered.#hcldr

It’s TUESDAY at Morning eHealth. This edition was penned from the city of bridges and anthropomorphized pierogies. What’s cooking this week? Pass news tips and regional potato-based delicacies along to [email protected]. Reach the rest of the team socially at @arthurallen202, @dariustahir,@ravindranize, @POLITICOPro,@Morning_eHealth.

TRACKING A ‘FORGOTTEN’ HEALTH CRISIS FROM SPACE. Officials trying to get the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo firmly under control are relying on the assistance of satellite imagery combined with machine-learning to pinpoint the most dire areas of the nation’s hardest-hit Equateur province, according to Rhiannan Price, director of the global development program at commercial space firm Digital Globe.

“There was a real difficulty in guiding people in the field,” she recounted. “Where do folks live, how many people live there? Basic geospatial questions. We wanted to create actionable information to guide the response in these communities.”

Along with sister company Radiant Solutions and a team at the University of California, Los Angeles, Digital Globe compiled the datafor the Gates Foundation and other public health NGOs, which had access to scant information about population density and infrastructure such as buildings or the condition of the war-ravaged nation’s road network.

“Satellite imagery becomes a game changer in emergencies like this,” the company says. “The imagery provides a timely source of truth over even the most remote, forgotten areas of the world.”

FCC OVERSIGHT HEARING COULD HAPPEN IN JULY: House Energy and Commerce Committee lawmakers are tentatively eyeing July 25 for an FCC oversight hearing, our POLITICO Tech colleagues report. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and his fellow commissioners haven’t testified in front of the panel since October, much to the consternation of some Democrats. The Senate Commerce Committee is signaling interest in its own FCC oversight hearing for August, some sources said. More for Pros here.

LIBERAL GROUP TO SPEND $5M OPPOSING TRUMP’S SCOTUS PICK: Demand Justice is gearing up to oppose President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick, expected next week. An official said the group plans to invest in radio, TV, digital and voter mobilization; TV ads will begin running in Maine and Alaska on Thursday focusing on abortion rights and Roe. v. Wade; radio ads will start next week in those states.

The group also plans ads urging Democratic Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana to vote no, citing the need to maintain Obamacare’s protections for pre-existing conditions. Pros can read the rest of the story here.

STUDY SAYS MOBILE TECH ACCURATELY MEASURES VITAL SIGNS: Scripps Translational Science Institute researchers say mobile health technology can accurately measure cardiovascular risk factors without requiring much patient training. Activity trackers, sleep monitors and blood pressure devices could give physicians more insight into patients’ regular behavior, they say. The study, published in the journal Hypertension, assessed subjects’ cardiovascular risk, and it closely matched national averages and studies performed in controlled clinical settings, lead author Brian Modena said in a news release.

PERSONNEL NEWS: Pew’s Ben Moscovitch has been promoted to project director for Pew’s health IT initiative, he tweeted Monday.

WHAT WE’RE CLICKING ON:

—ACT | The App Association’s writeup on benefits of 5G for health tech

—HealthcareITNews’s report on EHRs’ contribution to physician burnout

—Healthcaredive explores tech startups trying to bring back the house call

CLARIFICATION: The July 2 edition of Morning eHealth misinterpreted a VA spokesman’s comments about the agency’s Medical Appointment Scheduling System contract, according to the VA. The VA says it has not yet decided the ultimate fate of the contract, which involves Epic scheduling software.