Low-drama earnings after athena’s eventful quarter

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

DRAMA-FREE ATHENA EARNINGS REPORT AFTER EVENTFUL QUARTER: The practice management and electronic health records company had a tumultuous few months, highlighted by the exit of its firebrand CEO Jonathan Bush after allegations of sexual harassment and sexual abuse resurfaced during a hostile takeover bid by major shareholder and activist investor Elliott Management. Luckily for investors, the drama wasn’t reflected in its second quarter earnings, disclosed Monday evening.

The company reported revenue of about $323 million; it recently switched to a new revenue reporting standard, but calculations prior to that reflect a 10 percent growth in revenue compared to the same quarter last year.

Despite “quite an eventful quarter,” the leadership team has “renewed focus” on athenahealth’s critical business priorities, Chief Financial Officer Marc Levine said during the earnings call. Levine himself has only been CFO for less than a year.

The board is still deciding whether to sell, merge or continue as an independent entity, Jeff Immelt, the former GE CEO who now serves as athenahealth’s executive chairman, said during the call.

A BUSY AUGUST FOR FCC: The Senate Commerce Committee plans to summon all four FCC commissioners for an Aug. 15 oversight hearing, marking agency chief Ajit Pai’s first appearance before the panel this year, our colleague John Hendel reports.

“From efforts to better utilize spectrum powering our wireless economy to expanding rural broadband access, combatting robocalls, and reviewing the media landscape, the FCC and its operations are critically important,” Chairman John Thune said in a statement.

As we reported earlier this month, the FCC also plans to vote in early August on a proposal for a $100 million telehealth pilot pitched by Commissioner Brendan Carr. The pilot project would focus on remote monitoring programs for low-income Americans.

Pai also named a new chief economist Monday: law professor Babette Boliek. A professor and associate dean of faculty research at Pepperdine University School of Law, she also serves as a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, our colleague Margaret Harding McGill reports. Boliek’s research at Pepperdine has focused on internet regulation, privacy and the wireless industry.

OCR ENFORCEMENTS CONTINUING TO FALL, LAW FIRM ANALYSIS SAYS: HHS’s Office for Civil Rights is continuing to draw less blood, an analysis published by law firm Gibson Dunn says. According to the law firm’s numbers, the office has secured $7.9 million in fines through August, putting it on course for a “a dramatic decline in HIPAA enforcement actions” in 2018. That would mark the second straight annual drop-off, as the office collected $19.4 million in fines in 2017 — a substantial pace, but still $4 million less than 2016’s record total of $23.5 million.

The numbers are a continuation of a trend we described early this year, when noting that several close observers were unsure about the office’s direction in privacy policy and enforcement. But, despite several months’ more data, Gibson Dunn still isn’t quite certain what to make of the office’s declining pace of enforcement.

“It remains to be seen whether the downtick in enforcement during the first half of 2018 signals a change in priorities, or whether we will see an acceleration of HIPAA settlements in the second half of the year,” they write.

eHealth Tweet of the day: Sean Carey @seanessee Absolutely this. Like many professions, medicine needs to evolve from an expert approach to a coach approach. [In response to] Sachin H. Jain, MD @sacjai In era of democratized information & internet, the role of physicians will be more to provide procedural expertise, judgment, & wisdom gained through experience rather than merely dispensing knowledge. #ABIMF2018

WELCOME TO TUESDAY at Morning eHealth. Your author is intrigued by recent discussions about technology-based strategies for building patients’ trust in providers, especially from #abimf2018. What are some examples you’re seeing? Send those and news tips to [email protected]. Reach the rest of the team at @arthurallen202, @dariustahir, @ravindranize, @POLITICOPro and @Morning_eHealth.

PATIENTS DON’T EVEN SHOP FOR LOW-HANGING FRUIT: We’ve all heard about health care policymakers’ frustration with health care consumers: in theory, providing price transparency tools and high-deductible plans should result in patients ferreting out the best services for them. In practice, that’s not at all true — even in the most favorable conditions, a new working paper released through the National Bureau of Economic Research argues.

The team of four researchers, hailing from Yale, Harvard, and Columbia, examine consumers’ shopping behavior for lower-limb MRI scans — which should be among the lowest-hanging fruit for health care shopping. In theory, according to the authors’ data set, patients could reduce their out-of-pocket costs by 44 percent if they chose the cheapest option within an hour’s drive. In practice, physician recommendations drive patient choice. Fewer than 1 percent of patients searched for the price of their scans on their plan’s price transparency tools.

“Is health care shoppable?” ask the authors. “Our evidence suggests that, at present, the answer is ‘no.’”

[RE]BUILDING TRUST: That’s the theme of this year’s ABIM Foundation conference, and our editor Joanne Kenen (who took part in a panel on trust and health media) sends home a few takeaways:

—MIT political scientist, Adam Berinsky, who studies public opinion and communication, talked about the decline of trust in authority and expertise (including doctors and the health system) and about how hard it is to break though myths and falsehood. One observation from him: don’t target hard-liners, focus more on those who are still at least a bit uncertain, but who may be reachable on something like vaccine safety. Also think about your messenger. The person who can best reach someone who opposes vaccines may not be a neutral public health group but a parent of a child with autism who still trusts vaccines. And the best messenger to, say, debunk death panels might be a Republican, not a health organization.

—Former CMMI director Patrick Conway, now president and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, talked about the role of trust and data as he takes much of what he learned in government and tries to push his state toward genuinely value-based care, and more risk-based payment (with the appropriate pace and supports for rural providers). The NC health plan and its foundation are investing in social determinants, and taking on child abuse and ACE (adverse events in childhood.). Conway is still a practicing physician — a pediatric hospitalist on weekend call — so he sees children who have been abused first hand, all too frequently.

And former CMS Administrator Don Berwick asked the thoughtful wrap up question: “How can we construct good local platforms in a toxic macro-environment.” Maybe you had to be there, but Joanne says, as usual, Berwick sort of said it all.

VA DENIES WILKIE REASSIGNMENT STORY: The Veterans Affairs Department has responded to a Washington Post report that newly confirmed Secretary Robert Wilkie plans to reassign several high-ranking appointees. In an emailed statement, spokesman Curt Cashour said John Ullyot will remain VA’s assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs and will not be running internal communications. Cashour himself remains press secretary and “has no plans to leave the department,” he said. Acting CIO Camilo Sandoval is also not leaving the VA or the administration, he said.

1.4 MILLION MAY HAVE BEEN AFFECTED BY UNITYPOINT BREACH: Iowa hospital and clinic system UnityPoint Health has told 1.4 million patients that their personal information may have been exposed due to a phishing attack, the Des Moines Register reports. Officials say they aren’t aware of any misuse of the data, but hackers could have accessed their bank account numbers and financial data. The group says the hackers didn’t appear to be interested in patient health data.

WHAT WE’RE CLICKING ON:

—An NYT Upshot report on the NBER working paper

—HealthcareIT News writes about Microsoft’s new blood-pressure-gauging eyeglasses