Search for VHA head gets serious

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

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Morning eHealth will not publish on Monday, Oct. 8. Our nextMorning eHealth newsletter will publish on Tuesday, Oct. 9. Please continue to follow Pro eHealth issueshere.

SEARCH FOR VHA HEAD GETS SERIOUS: The Veterans Affairs Department signaled its commitment to finding a permanent health undersecretary this week with the establishment of a search committee for a new Veterans Health Administration head.

The VHA hasn’t had a permanent leader since David Shulkin, who was appointed to the post by Barack Obama, left in February 2017 to be President Donald Trump’s VA secretary (until he was fired last March).

Search committee members include VA acting deputy secretary Jim Byrne, Disabled American Veterans executive director Garry Augustine, and Prostate Cancer Foundation head Jonathan Simons. They’re collecting job applications through Oct. 17.

CHIME GATHERS ON THE HILL: Morning eHealth’s Arthur Allen was onsite Thursday at the College of Health Information Management Executives’ Advocacy Summit, which also drew federal health IT leaders from ONC and CMS. A few of his takeaways:

— CMS Chief Medical Officer Kate Goodrich provided somewhat reassuring news — to hospital systems, anyway — on her agency’s approach to making information-sharing a condition of participation in Medicare. Requirements for participation are “all about health and safety, and you could argue that interoperability is about health and safety,” she said.

“But it also has to be something we believe every hospital can do. ... Through the RFI we’ve heard loud and clear the degree to which hospitals have that control. It is not entirely, or even 90 or 80 percent, within their control.” Having said that, Goodrich added, “there may be some things that may fit within the conditions of participation, and we’re exploring those.”

—The Trump administration remains intent on interoperability and assuring patient access to records, ONC chief Don Rucker told the meeting. He said he discussed the issue Thursday morning at the White House with CMS Administrator Seema Verma, Trump senior adviser Jared Kushner and White House policy coordinator Christopher Liddell.

—Members of an opioid task force praised the opioid bill’s infusion of support for state prescription drug monitoring programs included in the giant opioid bill passed Wednesday, but cautioned -- from personal experience — that technical tools alone would not solve the crisis and could even make it worse.

Edward Kopetsky, chief information officer at Stanford Children’s Health, lost his son to a drug overdose exactly one year ago. Tim Kopetsky was an athlete when he became addicted to prescription opioids a decade earlier and ended up homeless and in and out of rehab programs. He’d been sober for more than four years, his father said, when he relapsed and died at age 31. The terrible power of addiction means that tightening PDMP checks must be accompanied by offering recovery programs to people whose addictive behavior is captured, Kopetsky said. “If you cut them off they’re just going to go to street drugs,” he said. “That’s our next mission — what do we do to assist those people?”

eHealth Tweet of the day: Genevieve Morris @HITpolicywonk In non-Kavanaugh news today, Russia targeted medical records, so shouldn’t we be thinking carefully about centralized systems for things like opioid scripts, which arguably make it easier for them to gain sensitive info about people in power? CNN

It’s FRIDAY at Morning eHealth. Your author is taking a quick jaunt to visit family this weekend in Little Ferry, N.J. Is there anything to do there other than defect to the big city? Suggestions 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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LIFE FOR PART 2 AFTER THE OPIOIDS BILL? The massive opioid package that that is on its way to the president’s desk also garnered praise from HIMSS, which specifically applauded provisions that would let the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation add incentives to encourage behavioral health providers to adopt EHRs and also waive restrictions on telehealth reimbursement.

But other health advocates were disappointed that a provision making it easier for providers to access substance abuse information was left out of the final version, and blamed the American Medical Association, which sent a letter opposing the idea in the heat of legislative negotiations over the bill, Morning eHealth’s Darius Tahir reports.

An overhaul could pass anyway, and the AMA says it may be open to the prospect; Sen.Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) will work to pass a separate bill to overhaul the 1970s-era privacy provision, known as 42 CFR Part 2, which requires patients to explicitly consent to sharing their substance use treatment records, said a spokesperson for the senator, who gave no timeline for the effort.

Alexander’s efforts seem to have good support in the Senate — “north of 75 senators,” estimated Andrew Sperling, director of legislative and policy advocacy for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The House has already passed an overhaul bill, the Overdose Prevention and Patient Safety Act,H.R. 6082 (115). Pros can read the rest of Darius’s story here.

LEADERSHIP SHUFFLE AT SAMHSA: The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is reassigning the longtime leader of its mental health center, our colleague Dan Diamond reports.

Paolo del Vecchio, who has led the agency’s mental health center since 2012 and is well-known among advocates, has been tapped to run its office of management, technology and operations. The current head of the operations office, Greg Goldstein, is leaving the agency. It’s not yet clear who will replace del Vecchio as head of the mental health center. More from Dan for Pros here.

“ALL OF US” DOUBLING DOWN ON INCLUSIVITY: The National Institutes of Health’s plans for a million-patient research program hinge on community engagement partners to recruit participants, especially those who have historically avoided such large-scale government-run research programs. This week All of Us announced it was partnering with the Asian Health Coalition to reach Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. Another partner, the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, is hosting a Spanish-language Facebook Live Q&A for potential participants about reasons to contribute biospecimens and survey information.

PROVIDERS THINK MALWARE IS THE MANUFACTURERS’ PROBLEM: Among other news items at CHIME’s summit was a new survey, conducted with KLAS, finding that less than half of providers were confident that their medical device security strategies protected patient safety — and the majority thought manufacturer-related factors were the root cause of those issues.

The survey results, which will be made free for providers, polled 148 health professionals and found that 18 percent said they had devices affected by malware or ransomware in the last 18 months. About 39 percent thought their current device security strategies prevented disruptions in care.

Almost all respondents said they struggled with out-of-date operating systems and not being able to patch devices; they also said almost a third of manufacturers they worked with said the device security couldn’t be patched.

PEOPLE IN THE NEWS

— Health data a hot topic among MacArthur geniuses: Three of the 25 people to receive the coveted and mysteriously awarded $625,000 grants are steeped in health data. Deborah Estrin designs systems that rely on mobile devices and data for applications including personal health management. Amy Finkelstein is a health economist who focuses on health policy. Gregg Gonsalves is an epidemiologist studying inequities in global health. The full list is here.

— CHIME also announced that John Kravits, Geisinger Health System CIO, will be CHIME chair in 2020, and that Intermountain CIO Marc Probst received its Federal Public Policy Award for CIO Leadership.

— Atul Gawande, who heads the Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase health venture (and is a former MacArthur Foundation fellow), will keynote the HIMSS19 Global Conference in February.

WHAT WE’RE CLICKING ON

— TechCrunch profilesformer Uber exec Andrew Chapin’s new mental health startup

— Jeff Micklos — who testified this week before the Senate Aging Committee — argues for rethinking PTAC in a Health Affairs blog post.