CHRONIC Care Act could make it into funding bill

With help from Arthur Allen (@athurallen202) and Darius Tahir (@DariusTahir)

CHRONIC CARE ACT COULD MAKE IT INTO FUNDING BILL: The House version of a continuing resolution to keep the government open past Thursday could include the CHRONIC Care Act, which could make it easier for Medicare Advantage enrollees to pay for telehealth services. The CHRONIC Care Act would also expand the use of telehealth for treating and diagnosing strokes, especially in cases where immediate virtual care could minimize damage.

A summary of the funding bill from the House Energy and Commerce Committee says it would fund community health centers for two years and permanently remove a cap on Medicare coverage of therapy services, among other provisions. Most have bipartisan support.

“It’s way past time to fund these critical health care programs. Quickly approaching yet another funding cliff, the House is once again acting to extend the necessary funding upon which these programs and patients rely,” Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and Energy and Commerce health subcommittee Chairman Michael Burgess (R-Texas) said in a statement.

The deal could still change, but looks like it could win the support of telemedicine companies. Last week several organizations including the Alliance for Connected Care and the American Telemedicine Association urged House and Senate leaders to expand telemedicine and remote patient monitoring coverage under Medicare Advantage, to make virtual treatment for strokes more accessible under Medicare, and to ease restrictions on using telemedicine to treat patients with kidney problems in their homes.

“Now is the time to act to ensure that seniors are able to realize the benefits of digital technologies to manage their health care,” they wrote, arguing that “telehealth can reduce costs, improve outcomes and expand access to care.” More for Pros here.

KELLYANNE CONWAY SIDELINES THE OPIOID EXPERTS: White House counselor Kellyanne Conway is taking over the opioids agenda, but is freezing out drug policy professionals and turning instead to political staff, our colleagues Brianna Ehley and Sarah Karlin-Smith report.

Their plan has been to call for a border wall and to promise a “just say no” campaign. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is expected to slash the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy’s resources. The “drug czar” office doesn’t have a permanent director and has three political appointees on staff, down from nine last year.

The office has been “systematically excluded from key decisions about opioids and the strategy moving forward,” a former Trump administration staffer told POLITICO. The full story, for Pros, here.

Despite White House shakeups, health IT groups are still pushing the federal government to authorize a national drug prescription monitoring database, as we reported last week.

Joel White of Health IT Now and Steve Mullenix, a senior vice president at the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs, have pitched the FDA on a massive system that could cull data from state prescription drug monitoring programs, which can flag potential opioid abusers based on the number and frequency of refills. Pulling data from those disparate systems into one new database — instead of forcing state PDMPs to link together -- could cut down on overprescribing, they argue. More for Pros, here.

FREE RIDES DON’T CUT MISSED APPOINTMENTS: Providing patients with free rides through ridesharing services doesn’t actually reduce the incidence of missed appointments, a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine finds.

That’s contrary to conventional wisdom among some health systems. One such planned to work with ridesharing companies like Lyft and Uber to transport working-class patients who miss appointments because of the lack of cheap and convenient transportation. Those missed appointments cut into medical systems’ revenue and keep patients from receiving adequate care.

Still, when University of Pennsylvania researchers split more than 500 patients into two groups — one that got free rides to appointments, one that didn’t — the difference in missed appointments was negligible.

Sachin Jain, president of CareMore Health, isn’t fazed. He says a ridesharing program program within his company has seen success, and that “[r]ide-sharing is likely to work differently in different populations,” he said. More for Pros here.

eHealth Tweets of the day:

Larry Levitt @larry_levitt Some terminology: 1. National health service: Care by doctors employed by the government and public hospitals. 2. Single payer: A public insurance plan with private doctors/hospitals. 3. Universal coverage: Everyone covered, but not necessarily by public insurance or providers.

Jason Raasch, MD @JasonRaaschMD This is how an @Allscripts user interfaces with #Epic. Kind of...analog. #EHR #HealthIT #Allscripts #EpicSystems #EMR #meaninglessuse

It’s TUESDAY at Morning eHealth, where we’re wondering what exciting ways you’re using, or not using, Blockchain in health care. Send your most intriguing decentralized ledger stories to [email protected], or Tweet them to @ravindranize, @athurallen202, @DariusTahir, @POLITICOPro, @Morning_eHealth.

ROE COULD JOIN THE GOP EXODUS: Tennessee’s Rep. Phil Roe, who chairs the Veterans’ Affairs Committee could be the 10th GOP chairman to decide against re-election in 2018, Roll Call reports. He says he’ll decide “in the next week or so” and that. As of Monday, “I truly have not decided,” he said.

Roe has been critical of the VA’s efforts to buy an EHR system from Cerner that would link up to the military’s installation, and has said he was grateful that VA Secretary Shulkin had put a hold on those plans. More for Pros here.

WHAT’S GERMAN FOR ‘INTEROPERABILITY ISSUES’? It turns out that health information exchanges face the same challenges wherever you go. A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association finds that health systems in Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, and the United States vary in the amount of information available to clinicians, but that all faced shortcomings. Regardless of location, clinicians struggle to find where information is stored, access records in real time and identifying relevant data within specific documents.

— IN OTHER INTEROPERABILITY NEWS, KLAS Research finds that about 14 percent of surveyed organizations report achieving “deep interoperability”: being able to meet two of four criteria reflecting how easily they can exchange information with other health systems. That number is up from 6 percent in 2016.

The company’s research designates Epic customers as the most advanced out of vendors surveyed; about 51 percent reported meeting some criteria for deep interoperability, including being able to “ easily locate specific patient records or have them automatically presented to clinicians.” Only about 26 percent of Athenahealth’s customers reported deep interoperability.

Across vendors, about 26 percent of organizations that primarily share data with other groups using the same EHR achieved deep interoperability, KLAS found.

JOURNAL SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION: February’s edition of Health Affairs is focused on “the diffusion of innovation” and how programs seeking new ideas affect patients, providers and systems.

Editor Alan Weil writes in his editor’s letter: “Innovation is the hottest word in health care. Yet in a sprawling $3 trillion sector, the positive consequences of innovation are realized only if what one entity learns spreads from the innovator to others.”

Health Affairs is hosting a briefing on the edition at the National Press Club today (9:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.)

CHIME URGES FCC TO THINK RURAL: The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives asked the FCC last week to consider doubling funding for rural health care and to focus on areas affected by the opioid crisis. The FCC had requested comment on a proposed rule — Promoting Telehealth in Rural America.

Among CHIME’s other recommendations were that the FCC “work collaboratively with other agencies” including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, CMS and ONC on telemedicine; that it establish a national broadband strategy and that it remain vendor agnostic.

PERSONNEL NOTES Information management company Ciox Health has appointed W.B. “Mitch” Mitchell its senior vice president of government solutions, the first within the organization.

WHAT WE’RE CLICKING ON:

— Q&A with former CMMI head Patrick Conway

—Will AI overtake pathologists?

—Medicine could be losing control of its tools