VA finally gets permanent CIO

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

Editor’s Note: This edition of Morning eHealth is published weekdays at 10 a.m. POLITICO Pro eHealth subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 6 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro’s comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here.

As the partial government shutdown hits the two-week mark, Congress in one of its final acts confirmed some officials who could influence health technology and research policy. And there’s drama in the private sector, from a lawsuit against athenahealth to a massive funding round for Alphabet’s Verily. What we’re tracking:

— VA finally gets permanent CIO: The Veterans Affairs Department hasn’t had a permanent chief information officer for two years. That changed Wednesday night when the Senate confirmed James Gfrerer to the top tech spot; he’ll help oversee the multi-billion dollar implementation of Cerner’s EHR at the VA.

— New health tech influencers in Washington: Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers eyes the lead Republican spot on the E&C consumer protection subcommittee...GOP commissioner Brendan Carr is confirmed for his second term at the FCC...Kelvin Droegemeier is confirmed as President Donald Trump’s top tech adviser.

— Cerner takes a stab at drug price transparency: The Kansas City-based vendor, which snagged the VA’s decade long, $16 billion EHR modernization contract, is building a feature that could let clinicians review pricing information before prescribing medications to patients.

eHealth Tweet thread of the day: JD @jdmays Schlimmbesserung — a German word that means, An improvement that makes things worse.

Nicholas DiNubile MD @drnickUSA Schlimmbesserung-- a perfect description of current #EHR technology in #healthcare! #HealthcareHijacked #pathetic

And this: Scott Weitzman @ScottyWeitzmanWhat are some of the biggest #data challenges you would like to see solved this year? #PrivacyWithInteroperability is one big function for myself, I want data accessible but safe! #LiberateTheData @RasuShrestha @CoherenceMed @Julie__PHM @mdennedy @ShereesePubHlth

IT’S FRIDAY at Morning eHealth. Your correspondent spent her holiday taste-testing soup dumplings at various Chinese restaurants in Pittsburgh. Where can she find xiao long bao near the District? Dispense dumpling wisdom to [email protected]. Tweet the team at @arthurallen202, @dariustahir, @ravindranize, @POLITICOPro and @Morning_eHealth.

The Senate confirmed James Gfrerer as the VA’s chief information officer and assistant secretary of information and technology on Thursday.

Gfrerer’s chief responsibility will be overseeing the massive health records modernization project that aims to make the VA’s system interoperable with the DoD’s and private health care providers. As Arthur reports for eHealth, Gferer is a former Marine and cybersecurity expert with no background in health care.

Former Trump campaign staffer Camilo Sandoval, who doesn’t have a health IT background either, has led the office since April. (Sandoval is also being sued for alleged sexual harassment during the Trump campaign, though the administration has attempted to quash that suit.)

President Donald Trump had put Gfrerer’s name forward in July, but his confirmation had been blocked by Democratic senators. His confirmation ends a two-year period without a permanent CIO since LaVerne Council’s resignation. Pros can read the rest of Arthur’s story here.

Elsewhere in Washington, some new names have joined the roster of health tech influencers. A few that caught our eye:

— Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers is angling to become the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee tasked with issues involving commerce and consumer protection, our POLITICO colleague John Hendel reports.

— Earlier this week, the Senate unanimously confirmed Democrat and former FCC enforcement official Geoffrey Starks to the commission. It also confirmed GOP Commissioner Brendan Carr for his second term.

As we’ve reported, Carr has been an enthusiastic supporter of telemedicine, advocating for an FCC fund supporting remote monitoring and virtual health programs in rural areas.

...If you were hoping to see Carr at CES in Las Vegas next week, you’re out of luck. He and chairman Ajit Pai are canceling appearances at the much-hyped consumer electronics showcase because of the shutdown, POLITICO’s Margaret Harding McGill reports.

— The Senate also unanimously confirmed Kelvin Droegemeier to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Hendel reports. That was part of a wide-ranging deal to advance nominations. (STAT dug into on Droegemeier’s research background in August.)

—Cerner is collaboratingwith CoverMyMeds, McKesson’s electronic prior authorization platform, on a feature that can process a patient’s benefits and drug prices so clinicians can discuss the cost of care before prescribing anything. It’s now available in more than 1,000 clinics.

This isn’t Cerner’s first pricing data partnership. In February the EHR giant announced a similar collaboration with e-prescription and prior authorization platform SureScripts.

The 115th Congress had shown interest in price transparency; Sen. Bill Cassidy established a task force on the topic in March.

...speaking of transparency, two drug companies — Amgen and Ipsen Biopharmaceuticals — are suing California state agencies and have already secured temporary restraining orders to prevent the public release of impending price increases, our colleague Victoria Colliver reports. Those moves that could effectively neuter key parts of the state’s landmark drug transparency law. Pros can read the rest of Victoria’s story here.

— Shareholder demands more sale info from Athenahealth: The EHR and practice-management software company founded by firebrand Jonathan Bush agreed last year to be acquired by Veritas Capital and Elliott Management for $5.7 billion. A shareholder has filed suit arguing that executives have not disclosed how they arrived at that price, FierceHealthcare’s Tina Reed reports.

Activist investor Elliott Management—whose private equity subsidiary has agreed to acquire athenahealth—had proposed acquiring the company for almost $7 billion in the spring. Shareholder Michael Kent argued that executives weren’t forthright in disclosures about interest from groups willing to pay more than $135 a share.

— Verily, the life science part of Google parent company Alphabet, just raised $1 billion. The funding round was led by Silver Lake, prompting some skepticism from observers about private equity’s role in research.

Alphabet’s chief financial officer Ruth Porat and Silver Lake managing partner Egon Durban will be nominated to Verily’s board, the companies said.

— Pharmaceutical company Otsuka and software company Click Therapeutics are developing and commercializing a prescription app for Major Depressive Disorder. The companies intend for FDA to evaluate the app in the “software as a medical device” category.

— ICYMI: Hospital data breaches are associated with an increase in annual advertising expenditures in the two years after the incident, researchers find in a study in the American Journal of Managed Care. If hospitals spent more on security, they wouldn’t have to shovel so much into repairing their images, the study concludes.

— Newborn Genomic Sequencing can effectively detect risk and carrier status for conditions that are missed by screening assays and family history, researchers find in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

FROM THE COMMENT SECTION: The American Medical Informatics Association says the CDC’s nascent concept of a “National Test Collaborative,” which would let the agency test health IT that could share public health evidence with clinicians, should start small. In response to the CDC’s RFI, AMIA suggested that the agency start with a limited pilot to figure out how to coordinate between health IT developers, clinicians and others.

National Association of ACOs announces its 2019 Board of Directors …. ZocDoc CTO Serkan Kutan says he’s leaving the company.

—Steven Ross Johnson writes about Novartis’ data sharing for antibiotic development in Modern Healthcare

—Kara Swisher wonders whether we’ve seen the end of Apple in The New York Times

—Michael Millenson writes about Google’s health ventures in STAT