Health IT groups happy with the omnibus

With help from Arthur Allen (@arthurallen202), Darius Tahir (@dariustahir) and Dan Diamond (@ddiamond)

HEALTH IT GROUPS MOSTLY HAPPY WITH THE OMNIBUS: Experts tell POLITICO that the spending deal the Senate passed late last night is favorable for federal health IT groups, though funding for ONC and OCR remains flat.

Congress rejected a White House budget proposal that slashed ONC’s budget to $38 million for fiscal 2018, and instead allotted about $60 million to the agency. The White House had requested $33 million for OCR; the omnibus keeps it at its current level, $38.7 million.

Despite discrepancies in actual dollar amounts, the omnibus mirrors the White House’s recent commitments to health data and making patient records more easily accessible, HIMSS vice president for government relations Tom Leary tells POLITICO.

Congressional staffers told him they were “made aware” of that effort when working on the bill, Leary said. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and CMS Administrator Seema Verma made an ambitious but detail-scarce promise to revamp health IT at HIMSS earlier this month.

Once Trump signs the budget, Leary said, HIMSS will make a push to tell lawmakers how important ONC is in coordinating standards and fulfilling the 21st Century Cures Act.

MORE REACTIONS TO THE BILL:

— The Medical Informatics Association supports the full funding of ONC, CDC, AHRQ and the FDA, as well as the $3 billion boost to the NIH, according to a statement from the group. “While there continues to be a tug-of-war between White House and Congressional funding and policy priorities, this budget will give HHS agencies and offices a few months of consistency,” they said.

— Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) was especially encouraged by a $100 million boost for community behavioral health clinics, she said in a statement. Matsui recently unveiled an amendment to the Ryan Haight Act that would authorize mental health clinics to coordinate video consultations with remote providers so they can prescribe controlled substances to their patients.

— Research!America president and CEO Mary Woolley said the boost for NIH funding could lead to solutions to the opioid epidemic. Additional funding for AHRQ represents a “sound investment to achieve higher quality, lower cost health care,” she said.

— Rep. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., scored a victory with the inclusion of “Jessie’s Law,” which would ensure that care providers have knowledge of patients’ opioid abuse history if the patient decides to share that data. The eventual goal, according to Manchin’s office, is to flag the patient’s record if they’ve experienced an opioid addiction, just as a record might note an allergy. Manchin called the measure ”bipartisan, commonsense legislation.”

SEEMA VERMA PREVIEWS MEDICARE AGENDA — The CMS administrator shared a preview of upcoming Medicare payment regulations, with an eye toward ensuring “sustainability of the program,” she told our colleague Rachana Pradhan and other reporters yesterday.

— CMS wants to ‘double down’ on price transparency, with a goal of helping enrollees understand their costs. “You’re going to see us just get started on that with the payment rules but there’s a lot more coming around that,” Verma said. “When we look at the Medicare system, we all know that if you go to one place it might be cheaper than another place.”

— The agency intends to reduce burden on providers, partly by shrinking their reporting measures and changing the conditions they must meet to participate in the Medicare program. Verma also suggested that the agency is pursuing changes related to Stark laws, which govern physician self-referral for Medicare and Medicaid patients. “We’ve heard that that’s a big barrier for providers when they’re trying to do value-based payment arrangements,” she said.

— Verma also plans to build on interoperability of electronic health records through the MyHealthEData initiative, which aims to help patients have better access to their own health records, that she announced last month. “You will see the actual actions that we are taking around interoperability this year,” she said.

CALL FOR MACRA REFORM FALLS ON DEAF EARS: Policymakers have largely ignored calls from the Medicare Payment Advisory Committee to eliminate the new Merit-based Incentive Payment System and have instead focused on tweaking it, our colleague David Pittman reports.

In last month’s two-year budget deal, lawmakers “provided some significant flexibility” in the program, according to Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J.

“Anytime MedPAC makes a recommendation, I think we should look at it seriously,” Pallone, who is the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told David. “But whether or not we follow up on it, at this point, I couldn’t say.”

David’s full story, for Pros, here.

It’s FRIDAY at Morning eHealth where your author has finally decided, unrelated to the Trump-Biden showdown, to sign up for boxing classes. Any recommendations for trusted hand wraps/gloves? Send those and news tips her way at [email protected]. Or Tweet ‘em to @arthurallen202, @dariustahir, @ravindranize, @POLITICOPro, @Morning_eHealth.

eHealth Tweets of the day:

— rusSELL GOLD @russellgold Why is @SecretaryPerry going to tour Brooke Army Medical Center tomorrow to get briefed on PTSD & TBI? Is he the stealth VA Secretary already?

— Dr. Tom Frieden @DrFrieden Encouraged to see Congress believes @CDC should continue their global health security work by providing $50M in FY18 with three-year spending authority. These programs keep Americans safe, and help the world better prepare for the next epidemic. http://ow.ly/he9i30j6dHC

— Arien Malec @amalec Somebody should work on a secure digital standard to get data from practice to practice built into #EHR @DrDannySand Only in healthcare would this be seen as an #innovation. From the cover page of a fax I received today in my practice. What is wrong with our industry? #StuckInThePast #WelcomeToThe90s [links to an image notifying the recipient of the VNA of Boston’s transition from receiving documents via mail to fax.]

AZAR TAPS CVS VICE PRESIDENT TO LEAD DRUG PRICING PROGRAM: HHS Secretary Alex Azar is bringing on CVS Caremark Vice President Daniel Best to head up the department’s effort to lower drug prices, a source with knowledge of the hire tells our colleague Adam Cancryn reports.

Best has led industry relations for CVS‘ Medicare Part D business and will oversee HHS’ day-to-day work on initiatives aimed at cutting pharmaceutical costs, Adam reports. Best joined CVS as part of the company’s 2011 acquisition of Universal American‘s Part D operations, and previously worked for Pfizer.

Adam’s full story, for Pros, here.

NY TOUTS PDMP IMPROVEMENTS: New York is touting some improvements in its state prescription drug monitoring program. According to a release Thursday, the database is now interoperable with 25 states plus DC.
New York has been active in deploying IT solutions to the opioid crisis; it also recently implemented mandatory e-prescriptions of drugs, as well as mandatory checks of the state PDMP. The release claims that since the legislation putting those requirements in place, doctor shopping has declined by 98 percent.

FDA LAUNCHES MOBILE APP FOR DRUG INFO: The Food and Drug Administration yesterday unveiled “Drugs@FDA Express,” an app that lets users search a database of FDA-approved brand and generic drugs and therapeutic products. The FDA already has a website dedicated to this database, but the app is a streamlined version, according to the agency. The app doesn’t have everything, though -- mobile users won’t be able to access approval letters, for instance, unless they go to the web page. The app represents FDA’s effort to “bring information to consumers in more accessible formats,” Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a release.

COMMENTS ON PRICE TRANSPARENCY EFFORT DUE TODAY: A bipartisan group of Senators has been gathering information from patients, providers and insurers about ways to increase price transparency, and comments are due today.

Sen. Bill Cassidyhas established a working group on price transparency that includes Sens. Todd Young, Chuck Grassley, Michael Bennet, Tom Carper and Claire McCaskill. The goal is to craft legislation that would make pricing data widely available.

The group has posed several tough questions to stakeholders, including who should be responsible for making health data available, and how to ensure that reporting requirements don’t place an unnecessary burden on providers and payers.

WHAT WE’RE CLICKING ON:

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—UCSF and Stanford researchers decode the Atacama Skeleton

—Fact checking Trump’s pledge on private care for vets