Coast Guard chooses Cerner EHR in compact with Pentagon

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

COAST GUARD CHOOSES CERNER EHR IN COMPACT WITH PENTAGON: The Pentagon’s EHR project is getting a little bigger. The department announced Monday that it’s adding the Coast Guard to its MHS Genesis EHR implementation, Morning eHealth’s Arthur Allen reports.

Officials did not specify the cost of the expansion but suggested the current $4.3 billion contract could grow.

The Coast Guard has long struggled with its EHR system and has been relying on paper records at its 41 U.S. health clinics and 125 sick bays since it canceled a $14 million contract with Epic in 2015. Officials said the Coast Guard will adopt and deploy the same Cerner product the military is already using, beginning with a pilot at one of its West Coast bases.

The Coast Guard still has to ensure that its hardware and network infrastructure are sufficient to handle the Cerner system, Stacy Cummings, who leads the MHS Genesis program, told reporters Monday. The military’s experience with these issues – and with problems such as delayed logons due to military cybersecurity protocols – will help the Coast Guard, she said.

“Our requirements are 100 percent the same” as the Pentagon, said Rear Admiral Michael Johnston, the Coast Guard’s acquisitions chief. The Coast Guard has about 2 percent as many service members as DoD, said Johnston, who declined to provide an estimate for the agency’s part of the contract.

The federal proposal notice announcing the March 22 decision to add the Coast Guard to MHS Genesis also suggests potential further expansions of the Leidos-led contract, as well as an increase in its current $4.3 billion ceiling.

“The scope being added under this modification will allow for the ordering of all services and additional capabilities necessary to maintain a standard solution baseline with the VA and USCG as they implement the solution,” according to the notice.

Arthur’s full story, for Pros, is here.

ACTING VA SECRETARY URGES CONGRESS TO PASS CHOICE BILL: Acting Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie has asked Congress to quickly pass bipartisan Choice legislation that would provide expanded private sector options for veterans who use the VA.

Congress has twice extended the 2014 Choice Program, which came in response to the VA scheduling scandal. In March, advocates tried but failed to attach a bipartisan bill to the omnibus legislation, H.R. 1625 (115), that would have added funds and streamlined the program. Former VA Secretary David Shulkin strongly backed the bill, S. 2193 (115), before he was fired by two weeks ago.

Congressional sources said Wilkie had sent a letter to Senate and House Veterans’ Affairs chairmen and ranking members encouraging them to resume work on the bill, the latest version of which was agreed upon in March.

Sen. Johnny Isakson said in a statement that he’s still committed to passing the Caring for Our Veterans Act, which would allot $4 billion for the Veterans Choice program.

“As far as we are aware, the White House still supports Senator Isakson’s Caring for Our Veterans Act. There have been no requests for changes since Shulkin’s departure,” a spokesperson said in an email. “We agree with Acting VA Secretary Wilkie that Congress must act to advance reforms to streamline the VA’s community care programs and provide more efficient, quality and timely care to our veterans before funding expires.”

In a news release, House Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) said he was grateful to Wilkie for his support of the bill and was working with colleagues in the House and Senate “to find a path forward.”

Pros can read Arthur’s full story here.

AMA AND GOOGLE LAUNCH INTEROPERABILITY CHALLENGE: The American Medical Association and Google want your freshest ideas about ways to incorporate mobile device-generated patient data into clinical care, they announced Monday as they launched an interoperability challenge.

Entrants must submit ideas for systems that import patient-generated health data from mobile devices and apps, or systems that extract data from clinical care software and send it back to patients. Ideas will be judged based on their commitment to interoperability, potential to be implemented in the near-term, and ability to cut costs while improving patient experience, among other factors. Participants and their supporters can also vote online for their favorite ideas.

AMA has been promoting a common data model that includes categories such as patient goals and conditions, and the challenge will “explore possible uses of mobile health technology to provide patients and physicians with a rich stream of medical data,” AMA President David Barbe said in a statement.

The first place winner will receive $25,000 in Google Cloud credits. Second and third place winners get $15,000 and $10,000, respectively. The competition is open only to startup entities, companies with less than $5 million in funding and less than $500,000 in annual revenue. The full story for Pros is here.

eHealth Tweet of the day, from the 23andMe CEO: Anne Wojcicki @annewoj23 For the past 4+ yrs I have not slept well knowing that there are 23andMe customers who carry the breast cancer mutation but we couldn’t tell them. I am happy to say that today we launched our BRCA1/2 (selected variants) report.

Welcome to TUESDAY at Morning eHealth. We’re expecting lots of discussion about opioids, PDMP and telemedicine on the Hill this week. Got a tip? Send it to [email protected] or Tweet to @arthurallen202, @dariustahir, @ravindranize, @POLITICOPro, @Morning_eHealth.

PSC CALLS OUT SAMHSA FOR BLOCKING CONTRACTORS: The government contracting trade group wrote a letter last week to Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration assistant secretary Elinore McCance-Katz urging her to recognize the role contractors could play in addressing the opioid abuse crisis.

In a blog post published in March, McCance-Katz wrote that SAMHSA’s technical assistance program, which helps grantees meet their internal goals, would no longer be contractor-driven. “I do not believe the government or its contractors are best equipped to determine the needs of a grantee. I believe that grantees know their programs and their needs best,” she wrote.

In PSC’s response, executive vice president Alan Chvotkin wrote that “particularly in light of the growing opioid epidemic, we believe that contractors are now — and can continue to be — part of SAMHSA’s solutions and successes.”

He added, “[e]xcluding private sector partners will harm SAMHSA’s ability to achieve its mission outcomes, and ultimately erode needed capabilities that support SAMHSA’s important work.”

HHS URGES DISTRICT COURT TO DISMISS CIOX CASE: The department has said a case filed by Ciox Health, which helps providers retrieve medical records, falls outside HIPAA enforcement and should therefore be dismissed, Fierce Healthcare reports.

Ciox filed the suit this year to challenge OCR guidance that would limit charges for medical records to a “reasonable cost-based fee,” among other complaints. HHS has said the rule doesn’t apply to Ciox, which the department has classified as a business associate and not a covered entity.

“Indeed, because HHS has not and cannot take enforcement action against Ciox regarding the fees it charges for individual requests of PHI, Ciox cannot raise either an enforcement or preenforcement challenge to the Privacy Rule provision and guidance at issue,” the motionto dismiss says.

... In other lawsuit news, a scientist who has developed heart rate monitoring technology is suing Apple for patent infringement, Mobi Health News reports. Omni MedSci alleges that its principal, Mohammed Islam, had demonstrated to Apple executives the same kind of heart rate monitoring technology seen in its smart watches, and that they had discussed potentially licensing the technology but didn’t follow through.

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