Will data bills go anywhere in 2019?

With help from Darius Tahir and Mohana Ravindranath

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WILL DATA LEGISLATION GO ANYWHERE IN 2019? : Disagreement is wide on the particulars, rendering uncertain the prospects for any privacy bill addressing health care data.

Tech firms are worried about complying simultaneously with new privacy rules in Europe and California, and want Congress to pass simplified national requirements. Privacy advocates want more government scrutiny, or consumer control, over the use of the data from things like Google searches and wearable apps.

High-profile data scandals at tech companies like Facebook have gotten lawmakers interested on both sides of the aisle. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and John Neely Kennedy introduced data privacy legislation in April, and Sen. Ron Wyden submitted a bill Thursday.

Whether it goes anywhere is anyone’s guess. A Democratic flip of the House could promote privacy efforts — then again the issue could get lost in other agendas. “I’m not sure privacy legislation is at the top of Democrats’ priority list at the moment,” says health data privacy expert Michelle De Mooy.

If the parties engage — and it’s certainly a likely candidate for bipartisanship — they’ll have a tricky time balancing the business community’s desire for simplified regulation and privacy advocates’ intent to make it harder for corporations to sell and manipulate consumers’ data without their knowledge or control.

Pros can read Darius’ story here.

‘MILLIONS WILL BENEFIT:’ Telemedicine fans continue to respond enthusiastically to the CMS rule drop Thursday that provided a major expansion of reimbursement for the service. The 2019 physician payment rule included new coverage for virtual check-ins, remote image evaluation, and treatments for stroke, kidney disease, mental health and substance abuse.

“Nothing before will have mattered if this didn’t happen,” says Robert Jarrin of Qualcomm. “Now millions of lives will benefit. What a profound achievement for the future of medical services.’

Health IT Executive Director Joel White was also full of praise, but wants more from Congress.

“CMS’s decision not to define these virtual services as ‘telehealth,’ so as to avoid running afoul of current inflexible telehealth restrictions, highlights the urgent need for Congress to do its part as well. We cannot fully realize the promise of telehealth in Medicare independent of Congressional action.”

Tweet of the Day: Nikhil Krishnan @nikillinit I just used the Apple Health app to import my health record data. It’s the first thing in a while in healthcareland that has made me genuinely smile because it’s so clearly the future. Highly recommend trying it out

Welcome to Monday Morning eHealth, where we pass along recommendations for the following pieces of culture digested over the weekend: 1) Horacio Castellanos Moya’s latest novel, " Moronga,” focused on the interior life of a very neurotic writer. Castellanos Moya is the best Salvadoran writer since Roque Dalton, maybe the best ever. 2) “Can you ever forgive me?” — the Melissa McCarthy/Richard Grant vehicle about a sociopathic writer. 3) Joy Williams’ ” The Quick and the Dead.” Also very twisted. Seems to be a pattern here. Send news on health technology to [email protected], or tweet to the team @ravindranize, @arthurallen202, @dariustahir, @POLITICOPro, @Morning_eHealth.

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DIABETES CHALLENGES MOUNT: One in three adults in the United States, about 100 million people, are living with diabetes or prediabetes. Another case is diagnosed every 21 seconds. The American Diabetes Association estimates the total cost of diagnosed diabetes, including lost productivity, reached $327 billion in 2017, a big jump from $245 billion just five years earlier. And more and more young people are affected.

POLITICO convened a working group of clinicians, policymakers, researchers and community-based health workers to discuss the opportunities for prevention and management of this chronic disease. Participants agreed that the challenge is finding ways of preventing diabetes when possible and managing it optimally when prevention fails-- and care has to take place in the community as well as the clinic. But the rewards for better prevention and management are great - because if the health system can address the risk factors for diabetes, including weight, it will also be addressing many aspects of population health overall. Read it here .

ATUL GAWANDE ON THE DISASTER OF EHR CONVERSION — AND HIS HOPES FOR SOMETHING BETTER: In a piece in The New Yorker this morning, Gawande, the surgeon, writer and CEO of the much-publicized and still somewhat mysterious Berkshire-Hathaway, Amazon, JP Morgan health care venture, lays out a devastating case for how EHRs have failed doctors.

“Something’s gone terribly wrong. Doctors are among the most technology-avid people in society … yet somehow we’ve reached a point where people in the medical profession actively, viscerally, volubly hate their computers.”

The problem isn’t really limited to medicine, Gawande writes—in many other fields, the mounting complexity of software, the requirement that it adapt and serve new people and purposes, have created what he calls “the Tar Pit.” Technology will continually increase medicine’s ability to make diagnoses, offer treatments, and document them—"but not necessarily to make sense of it all.” The Gawande piece here.

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT: Bakul Patel, who leads the FDA’s digital health regulation, announced on Linkedin that he’s building a “dynamic Digital Health Team” and is looking for candidates with experience in areas such as mobile medical apps, medical device interoperability, health care cybersecurity, digital therapeutics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, big data and advanced analytics, cloud storage and wireless communication. Patel describes the Digital Health Unit as a “startup within the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health

… And you can get it, if you apply. More details here.

ALLSCRIPTS TAKES A HIT: The #3 EHR vendor’s shares plunged 19 percent Friday after the release of disappointing third quarter numbers. During an earnings call, the company said it would sell off its share of the behavioral health EHR developer Netsmart, which Allscripts CEO Paul Black said had disappointed. HIStalk notes that the company did not mention its Avenel EHR, unveiled at HIMSS18.

A survey of 222 cancer patients found that more than 95 percent of them found that reviewing open clinical notes from their care helped them understand their diagnoses and side effects, and in general gave them more reassurance about their treatment. A small number — around 5 percent — felt more confused or regretted reading the notes, in the study conducted by UCLA docs and scientists. More on the study here.

Most “Smart City” projects are vitamins when they should be painkillers, reports Tech Republic.

Kaiser Health News on how Daylight Savings Times stumps Epic, other EHRs

Aaron Carollon Women on Web’s new U.S. spinoff, which provides counseling and abortion pills for $95.

CSC required to pay nearly $400,000 for inadequate EHR implementationat DOE clinics in Washington state