Device trade group seeks break from tariffs

With help from Mohana Ravindranath and Darius Tahir

TRADE GROUP: TARIFFS WILL COST IMAGING COMPANIES MILLIONS: A medical imaging trade group is asking for special exemptions for components of medical devices from the Chinese import tariffs.

The list of items subject to an additional 25 percent duty last week includes parts of MRIs, sonograms, and electrocardiographs, in addition to medical implants such as pacemakers. The Medical Imaging and Technology Alliance surveyed its members and concluded the tariffs could cost imaging companies about $138 million a year.

The tariffs could force some companies to downsize and slash research and development budgets, executive director Patrick Hope tells Morning eHealth’s Mohana Ravindranath. The manufacturers of X-ray and CT scans would be most affected.

Tweet of the Day: KDnuggets @kdnuggets #Cartoon: How is #DataScience Different From #Religion? https://buff.ly/2KYedcW

Welcome to Monday Morning eHealth, where we can be heroes, like Luka Modric, at least for one day. Send inspiration to [email protected], or tweet paths of glory to the crew @ravindranize, @arthurallen202, @dariustahir, @POLITICOPro, @Morning_eHealth.

THE PROBLEM WITH HEALTH CARE: Too many people trying to fix it. From the copiously credentialed consultant to the new college grad with the health policy degree – a major which didn’t exist a generation ago - everyone’s trying to fix health care. And it adds billions to the bills. The Affordable Care Act was a bonanza for health care consultants – as is President Donald Trump’s attempt to take it down. Digitization forced doctors to abandon their bulging file folders in favor of computerized records. Providers, government and the private sector are all grappling with how to pay for medical care in ways that reward the quality, not quantity. Read more in Joanne Kenen’s POLITICO Agenda piece.

Other weekend reading: The Harris County sheriff’s office doesn’t want its jail to be the largest mental health facility in Texas anymore — but first it needs to find somewhere else to accommodate patients before they get swept up in the criminal justice system (Telepsychiatry is part of the solution). More here from Renuka Rayasam.

FIRST IN MORNING EHEALTH — NINE COMPANIES JOIN CEDARS SINAI ACCELERATOR: The Los Angeles-based health system has welcomed a new cohort of tech startups to its accelerator, which offers participants a $120,000 investment and a chance to pilot services on clinicians and patients in exchange for a 6 percent stake. The selection committee was especially interested in services that address EHR-related physician burnout, and ones that help them decide which genetic tests to provide patients, said Anne Wellington, the program’s managing director.

Phil Martie — CEO of Nicolette, which is piloting a guide for parents in the NICU — tells Morning eHealth that the accelerator program was appealing because association with a health network offers direct access to potential end-users. Nicolette plans to install iPads at the cribside of NICU babies to extract EHR data and make it more digestible for parents.

WORKGROUP TO STIMULATE DIGITAL INNOVATION? SURE, WE GOT OPINIONS: The American Medical Association responded to last month’s HHS RFI for a workgroupto stimulate health care innovation and investment with suggestions on its staffing and focus. “We generally agree with HHS that there is a need to increase engagement and dialogue between HHS and those focused on innovating and investing in the health care industry,” the AMA writes. “However, engagement alone is not enough. HHS should also strive to provide a clear outline of what constitutes success and ensure a common understanding among stakeholders. ... Clinicians and physician organizations waste time and resources on the adoption of solutions that are not sustainable, not scalable, or do not provide positive return on investment.”

The College of Health Information Management Executives, meanwhile, urges HHS to order the workgroup to recommend a set of standards to HHS Secretary Alex Azar that innovators should consider. One critical concept for technological innovation: “The downstream ethical considerations that will determine the extent of adoption by the end-users — clinicians and patients. Such considerations may not be immediately apparent to innovators.”

RESEARCH FINDINGS: An article in Friday’s JAMA Networks finds an error rate of 7.4 percent in speech recognition-generated clinical documents. The rate fell significantly after review by a medical transcriptionist, further still after clinician review. This shows “the importance of manual editing and review, user training, quality assurance, and auditing,” comments lead author Li Zhou, a researcher at Partners HealthCare. The technology is continually improving, Zhou said, but whether the software currently saves time, when patient safety is taken into account, requires further research. … A study published todayin the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association examines possible links between interoperability and consolidation in the hospital industry. Using data from 2014-2015 American Hospital Association surveys, the authors find that hospitals in more centralized systems—especially those with single insurance plans, such as the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center – engage in more efficient data sharing. Consolidation per se “may not bring significant gains in interoperability progress unless that consolidation takes a specific business alignment form,” write the authors, Jay Holmgren and Eric Ford of Harvard Business School and the University of Alabama School of Public Health, respectively.

CMS SIGNS OFF ON CALIFORNIA IT PROPOSAL: The state’s Emergency Medical Services Authority reportsthat CMS approved a $40 million California health IT plan for its EMS through September 2021. The plan facilitates bidirectional connections among HIEs and local EMS and other medical providers. It will advance care coordination by allowing Medicaid providers to meet meaningful use requirements through improved health information exchange and advancing interoperability tools and services for EMS, community paramedics, end-of-life decisions and disaster medical responses, the agency said in a release.

ICYMI: HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY ADDS 25,000 MORE WORKERS — The health care sector added 25,000 jobs last month — about 12 percent of job growth nationwide in June, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hospitals added 11,000 workers, while ambulatory services, which includes doctors’ offices, hired 14,000 more employees. Those figures are consistent with job growth over the past 12 months, with the health care sector adding just over 300,000 workers.

WHAT WE’RE CLICKING:

— Minneapolis Star Tribune: St. Jude notifies of need for cyber upgrades to 740,000 defibrillators

— Healthcare IT Newsreviews recent EHR go-lives

— Privacy hawk Adrian Gropper argues in a podcast that standards, free software, and blockchain will be essential to medicine

— Wisconsin State Journalreports that the ever-whimsical Judy Faulkner has purchased a carousel and other artesania from a Madison restaurant

CORRECTION: The July 6 edition of Morning eHealth indicated that Jennifer Wagner was a medical doctor. She has a doctorate but not an MD.