Health Datapalooza roundup

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

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—Health Datapalooza day two: HHS officials talked artificial intelligence, recruiting and more.

—CMS chief directed dollars to GOP-connected consultants: A POLITICO exclusive finds Seema Verma quietly approved subcontracts despite objections from staffers.

—Americans blame pharma, insurers and providers for health care costs: Respondents to a POLITICO/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health poll were dismissive of overuse as a major factor.

eHealth Tweet of the day: Josefine Magnusson @JosefineJEM Sharing patient data: do patients even know what exactly is in their medical records, and if not: how can informed consent be assertained?@turinginst@FCC_UK#DataSavesLives

It’s FRIDAY at Morning eHealth where your author is ready for the weekend after a buzzy Health Datapalooza. What were your highlights? Thoughts and tips go to [email protected]. Reach the rest of the team at @arthurallen202, @dariustahir, @ravindranize, @POLITICOPro and @Morning_eHealth.

HEALTH DATAPALOOZA COMES TO A CLOSE: The annual health information wonkfest wound down Thursday. Here’s a taste of what happened:

—Down with paternalism: ONC head Don Rucker gave his annual policy update, declaring that the agency was, at long last, carving a formal path toward interoperability. ONC’s rulemaking clarifying exceptions to the 21st Century Cures Act’s ban on information blocking was dropped in February, and Rucker’s team is gathering public comment until May 3.

Rucker said he encouraged comments “from folks who are interested in a new world, where the public can control their data.” Health care organizations do not “have to be run by paternalism,” Rucker added, dismissing the belief that patients aren’t knowledgeable enough to manage their own health data. “The era of the provider controlling all of this, I think this is over.”

—A call for techies: CMS deputy chief health information officer Alexandra Mugge said her team is also gathering comments on CMS’ counterpart to ONC’s information blocking rulemaking. (That proposed rule, also dropped in February, would require participants in federal insurance programs to adopt open data standards.) During a morning panel, Mugge said her goal was to get feedback directly from patients about how such a rule might impact their experience.

...U.S. Digital Services’ HHS lead Shannon Sartin, who directs a team of technologists largely recruited from the private sector for short-term stints, urged tech-minded audience members to consider joining the federal government for a couple years. People who wish CMS’ data were more accessible in the cloud should come and make it happen, she said. “If you’re not ready to work in government...you can come and tell us what to do,” Mugge added.

—Is artificial intelligence the key to value-based care? CMMI head Adam Boehler dropped by the mainstage to plug the artificial intelligence prize challenge the agency announced Wednesday. In conversation with reporters afterwards, Boehler sketched out a vision in which health care providers focus on the highest risk patients and are rewarded for preventive care.

...The $1.6 million AI challenge might seem like a fun contest, but it could actually be an important part of Boehler’s strategy for eliminating fee-for-service payments. The challenge solicits tools that could predict health outcomes based on Medicare data, like who’s likely to be readmitted.

...Once those tools are developed, CMMI could push them directly to certain providers, and eventually CMS as a whole could incorporate a providers’ use of artificial intelligence into quality assessments, he said.

...Boehler has been very vocal about his plans to “blow up” fee-for-service, and predictive algorithms could identify the patients who would most benefit from certain treatments. “If I say, ‘instead of paying you for volume I’m going to pay you to keep people out of the hospital,’ you’ll find the [electronic health record] changes from a revenue cycle system to a clinical system,” he said. The provider groups that buy that technology will say “‘I want predictive data,’” he added. (Pros can read the rest of the story here.)

SEEMA VERMA DIRECTED DOLLARS TO GOP-CONNECTED FIRM: Elsewhere at CMS, agency head Seema Verma has been quietly directing millions of taxpayer dollars to Republican communications consultants, and hired a GOP media adviser to bolster her own public profile even though CMS has its own communications shop, our colleagues Adam Cancryn and Dan Diamond report.

The communications subcontracts Verma approved were routed through a larger federal contract, Adam and Dan report — and they represent a break from precedent at CMS. In some cases the deals were approved over the objections of CMS staffers.

...The contracts are with longtime GOP media adviser Pam Stevens; Marcus Barlow, who Verma worked with in Indiana; and Nahigian Strategies, a firm run by Ken Nahigian, who briefly led President Donald Trump’s transition team and his brother, Keith Nahigian.

...Though her use of contracts and subcontracts was legal, "[t]here are a host of ethical and contractual problems with appointees steering contracts to political allies and subcontractors, and possibly a violation of the ban on personal services contracts if the work is being performed at the direction of the appointee,” Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight, told POLITICO.

Gottlieb wants new opioid approval standard: As he prepares to depart the administration, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb is asking Congress to give his agency the authority to come up with a new standard for opioid approvals that would require products to demonstrate that they’re safer or more effective than existing painkillers, our colleague Sarah Karlin-Smith reports. Currently the FDA is required to approve drugs whose benefits outweigh their risks, but they don’t have to demonstrate that they’re better than current offerings. Gottlieb has said that opioids should be treated differently, Sarah writes.

AMERICANS DON’T SEE OVERUSE AS A DRIVER OF HEALTH CARE COSTS: Respondents to a new POLITICO/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health poll blamed pharmaceutical companies, payers, providers and the government for rising health care costs, our colleague Renuka Rayasam writes. Almost 80 percent blamed drugmakers; 75 percent pointed to insurance companies, and 74 percent pointed to hospitals. Just about 23 percent said that people overusing health care was a major factor. “They aren’t hearing ‘overuse’ — they are hearing ‘use,’” Harvard’s Robert Blendon, who designed the poll with POLITICO, said.

NEW AI PARTNERSHIP: Under a multi-year agreement, pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb plans to use technology from Concerto HealthAI to analyze real-world evidence for clinical trials, the two groups announced Thursday. The analysis will cover various forms of cancer. As Darius reported, FDA’s Gottlieb has said technology and real-world evidence can speed up clinical trials.

—Leah Houston writes about the AMA’s exclusive access to health data
—Gloria Liou shares a first-hand account of the reality of Silicon Valley
—Vishal Khetpal writes about the perils of direct-to-consumer medicine for Undark
—CNBC’s Tucker Higgins reports on Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand’s husband’s stake in a medical startup