Privacy measure dropped from opioids package

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

PRIVACY MEASURE DROPPED FROM OPIOIDS PACKAGE: Groups lobbying to make it easier for doctors to share a patient’s substance abuse treatment records may have to take the measure up again next year. They appear to have lost the battle to include it in the final opioids package, which could drop as early as tonight, our colleagues Darius Tahir and Brianna Ehley report. The federal law known as 42 CFR Part 2 prevents the sharing of the sensitive treatment records without a patient’s explicit consent. While the House had approved changes in its original legislation, H.R. 6082 (115), they didn’t make it into the Senate version and were ultimately dropped in negotiations. (The full story for Pros is here.)

While many health care groups said the changes were needed to make it easier for providers to have more information about their patients, privacy groups worried about expanding access to the sensitive data.

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives was among advocates for that update; the group sent a letter to House and Senate lawmakers during conference discussions, arguing that providers should have a “complete medical history with all relevant information” and that keeping substance use disorder information separate is “extremely problematic when a clinician is attempting to treat someone but is unaware of their prior addiction history.”

...Elsewhere in the battle to end opioid abuse, lawmakers are looking to Canada. Speaking at a U.S.-Canada roundtable on opioids Monday, Sen. Maggie Hassan advocated for “open communication and information sharing” between the two countries.

HIMSS CEO Hal Wolf tells Morning eHealth that de-identified data from Canada could help U.S. health IT companies whip up algorithms that better predict substance abuse risk. The two countries could also share individual-level information to crack down on patients who are physician-shopping at the border, but the greater value is in training predictive algorithms on large and diverse data sets, he explained.

...The executive branch announced new opioid-related telemedicine grants. Mental health and opioid groups in Fairbanks, Alaska, are getting $6.2 million in new grants, HHS deputy secretary Eric Hargan announced Monday; he also led a “delegation of HHS officials to Alaska to discuss topics including telehealth technology and medicine ‘vending machines,’” according to an HHS tweet.

eHealth Tweet of the day: Jay Parkinson MD, MPH @jayparkinson I’ve been thinking a lot about AI in primary care lately, mostly because of the#deathbychatbot threads. Of all things to tackle with AI, primary care, with it’s wide spectrum of possibilities, is probably the hardest and most reckless.blog.jayparkinsonmd.com/2018/09/24/art…

It’s TUESDAY at Morning eHealth. Your author ventured all the way to Tyson’s to try the lamb at Shamshiry and can confirm it’s well worth the trek. Kebab intel and news tips go to [email protected]. Reach the rest of the team at @arthurallen202, @dariustahir, @ravindranize, @POLITICOPro and @Morning_eHealth.

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ON THE HILL TODAY — SENATE RURAL HEALTH HEARING: ACT | App Association president Morgan Reed is joining the Senate HELP’s primary health subcommittee’s inquiry into the costs and experiences of rural care. Reed will advocate for policies that expand access to broadband, remove telehealth reimbursement restrictions and prioritize value-based models instead of fee-for-service. The subcommittee’s “wide-ranging jurisdiction from mental health and substance abuse to ‘health care disparities’ puts it at the center of decoding the discrepancies between rural and urban healthcare,” Reed’s prepared testimony says.

WHITE HOUSE SPOTLIGHTS QUANTUM, BUT SKIPS OVER HEALTH: Monday’s quantum computing summit at the White House didn’t include representatives from health-focused companies, but Dean Garfield — president of ITI, many of whose members were there — called it a good start to a conversation on advancing US competitiveness in quantum, which he said could “revolutionize how we detect cancer, speed up the production of autonomous vehicles, and improve how we forecast weather patterns.”

CALIFORNIA: GOVERNOR APPROVES NEW LAW TO PROTECT CLINICAL TRIALS, RESEARCH: Drug, pharmaceutical and life sciences companies are applauding Gov. Jerry Brown’s approval of a bill designed to fix a new online privacy law that they argued could have been “catastrophic” for the state’s clinical trial industry.

“By signing Senate Bill 1121 into law, California life sciences companies can continue doing what they do best — finding cures and treatments for the patients that need them,” said Sara Radcliffe, president of the California Life Sciences Association.

… The online privacy law, Assembly Bill 375, gave consumers more rights over how companies collect and manage personal information and data. But the health care industry warned that clinical trial patients could request their data be deleted — or discover whether they’ve been given a placebo — putting their studies at risk.

The newly approved law restricts patients from deleting their data or making requests that violate the terms of their clinical trial contract.

WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE: A piece published in JAMAPediatrics drew ire from readers when it compared the effect EHRs have on physicians to autism. They felt the comparison was unkind to people with autism.

ICYMI: NEW DATA ELEMENT SET PILOT FOR CANCER: The MITRE Corporation is partnering with the American Society of Clinical Oncology, CancerLinQ LLC, and Intermountain Healthcare on a set of cancer data elements to be pulled from EHRs for better treatment. The Minimal Common Oncology Data Elements — or “M-CODE” — could “lead to greater interoperability of EHRs and improve quality and care coordination across oncology practices,” CancerLinQ CEO Cory Wiegert said in a news release.

AHIMA MAKES A CASE FOR LGBTQ-FRIENDLY HEALTH DATA: The American Health Information Management Association is urging HHS to create certification rules requiring EHRs to have fields for sexual orientation and gender identity. “It requires ongoing training of staff, recognizing the needs of LGBTQ patients to feel accepted and supported by their healthcare providers and promoting non-discrimination practices,” Julie Dooling, a director at AHIMA, said in a news release.

“[W]e also need to record information that will increase patient trust and satisfaction,” she said — including whether a patient prefers to be addressed by certain pronouns, whether their legal name is different from their preferred name, and what information is listed on their official documents.

NEW MEMBERS ON PCORI BOARD: The congressionally funded Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute has seven new board members, according to the Government Accountability Office, which made the appointments. Members, who represent the viewpoints of patients, insurers, employers, policy experts and others, serve six-year terms. New board members are University of Cincinnati’s Kara Ayers, Oregon Health and Science University’s Jennifer DeVoe, University of Michigan’s Christopher Friese, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association’s Trent Haywood, Oklahoma Health Care Authority’s Michael Herndon, Johnson & Johnson’s Michelle McMurry-Heath, and the FDA’s Janet Woodcock.

PERSONNEL MOVES: Drinker Biddle & Reath’s District Policy Group added Laura Hanen and Elaine Vining as senior advisers on health care.

WHAT WE’RE CLICKING ON:

—The Drum interviews Babylon Health’s CEO Ali Parsa on his plan to create the “Google of health care”

—A MacRumors post evaluatesthe Apple Watch Series 4 fall detection feature

—Ilana Yurkiewicz writes about incomplete medical records and their affect on patients for Undark

—Palantir snagged a $7 million NIH contract, MobiHealthnews reports