Cleveland Clinic, AmWell launch new telehealth company

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

Editor’s Note: This edition of Morning eHealth is published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 10 a.m. POLITICO Pro eHealth subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 6 a.m. Learn more about POLITICO Pro’s comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services at politicopro.com.

Quick Fix

The Health Innovation Alliance will reprise its call for patient matching technology in a congressional briefing today, part of its campaign to pressure lawmakers to lift a decades-long ban on using federal dollars for unique patient identifiers. Tomorrow marks a year since the SUPPORT Act was signed into law. Here’s what else we’re tracking:

— Cleveland Clinic, AmWell launch telehealth company: The new venture, called “The Clinic,” will be jointly operated by both groups.

— Spotlight on telemental health: A new survey from Epstein Becker & Green finds that virtual consultations for behavioral health are becoming more common, despite some legislative barriers.

— FTC’s health data demands: The agency ordered Aetna, Anthem, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, Cigna, United Healthcare, Ballad Health and Cabell Huntington Hospital to hand over patient-level data as part of its investigation into certificates of public advantage, known as COPAs.

eHealth Tweet of the day: Edward Tufte @EdwardTufte We see Electronic Health Records

Everywhere, except in mortality

and morbidity statistics.

Welcome to WEDNESDAY at Morning eHealth where your author was intrigued to learn that restaurants are tracking Tweets and Facebook posts to keep up with foodborne illness outbreaks. (H/t Stat’s Michelle Harden.) Other instances of social media listening go to [email protected].Tweet the team at @arthurallen202, @dariustahir, @ravindranize, @POLITICOPro and @Morning_eHealth.

Driving the Day

TELEHEALTH VENTURE COULD DRAW NEW PATIENTS — That’s one of many reasons Cleveland Clinic is partnering with American Well on a new company that aims to make Cleveland Clinic providers accessible to patients even outside the health system’s network, executives tell Morning eHealth.

Cleveland Clinic is no stranger to telehealth, nor to American Well, a telehealth company that offers employers and health systems access to its own network of doctors, as well as a video chat and messaging platform for virtual consultations. Cleveland Clinic had previously contracted with American Well to use its platform to host virtual urgent care consultations for patients; now, the two plan to jointly invest in and operate a new business offering wider virtual health services.

...The company, called The Clinic, will be based in Cleveland so that its employees can better communicate with the providers who will perform the consultations. Cleveland Clinic and American Well are still hiring staff and working out how much patients will need to pay for consultations, Cleveland Clinic Innovations’ executive medical director Will Morris said.

ROSY FUTURE FOR TELEMENTAL HEALTH — Public recognition for virtual mental health services has “significantly increased,” according to a new analysis and survey from Epstein Becker Green. The opioid package signed last year includes provisions removing Medicare reimbursement restrictions for virtual treatment of substance-use disorders; all 50 states and D.C. provide some Medicaid telehealth coverage, among other signals of potential growth.

...But regulatory barriers persist, the report finds. About a fifth of states lack telehealth parity laws, which would align reimbursement for in-person services with virtual ones. And the Ryan Haight Act, which generally bans clinicians from prescribing controlled substances to patients they haven’t met in person, limits the number of patients who can get virtual medication-assisted treatment.

As we reported earlier this week, the latter law may become less of a hurdle. Under the SUPPORT Act, DEA is working on a special registration process for qualified clinicians to prescribe controlled substances virtually to new patients. The agency is expected to pass that along to OMB this week.

FTC STUDIES COMPETITION IN HEALTH CARE — The FTC is investigating regulatory regimes that state governments use to quash competition between health care providers; as part of that study, it’s requesting data from payers and two health systems to better understand how such agreements affect quality, access and other health care metrics.

...The FTC is gathering patient-level claims data from payers, and information on billing, patient discharge, employee wages from two health systems, according to an agency press release.

AI, MACHINE LEARNING AT CENTER OF CMS’ NEW FRAUD PLAN — CMS plans to use new technology to better automate its fraud detection systems, CMS administrator Seema Verma wrote in a blog post this week. She cited President Donald Trump’s recent executive order directing the agency to better combat Medicare fraud.

Today, Medicare’s Fee-for-Service program uses clinicians to manually review medical records associated with claims; requiring providers to send those records is “time-intensive and burdensome,” she wrote.

As a result, the agency reviews less than one percent of medical records. Artificial intelligence and machine learning would be “more cost effective and less burdensome to both providers, suppliers and the Medicare program.” Those technologies could also augment predictive systems designed to flag future fraud, she wrote.

...CMS is also seeking input on other strategies for using technology to slash Medicare fraud and abuse.

BILL WOULD RENEW BONE MARROW AND CORD BLOOD REGISTRY FUNDING — House lawmakers this week introduced anew bill that would reauthorize several programs related to transplants, and would also renew funding for the national bone marrow and cord blood registries and the centers that coordinate blood donations.

...The Timely ReAuthorization of Necessary Stem-cell Programs Lends Access to Needed Therapies Act (yes, the TRANSPLANT Act), was led by Reps. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) and Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.), co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus to Cure Blood Cancers and Other Blood Disorders.

Lobby Watch

AMA, AHA AMONG TOP 10 LOBBYING SPENDERS —The American Hospital Association was fifth on the list this year, spending about $5.4 billion in the third quarter of this year, compared to $4.9 million in Q2 2019 and $5.2 million in Q3 2018, our POLITICO Influence colleagues report. The American Medical Association, eighth on the list, spent $4.6 million, compared to $4.7 million in Q2 2019 and $4.1 million in Q3 2018.

NIH HAS NEW LANDING PAGE FOR FHIR PROGRAMS —Thanks to ONC’s Steve Posnack for pointing out NIH’s new site describing the agency’s efforts to support the use of FHIR standards for health data exchange. He also reminds us that NIH has an open RFI on the standards, including on researchers’ experience with it and “the extent to which researchers plan or do not plan to use FHIR.”

Health IT Business Watch

MICROSOFT, HUMANA TO TACKLE AGING WITH AI, VOICE TECH — A new partnership aims to bring predictive technology to elder care, including systems that can keep up with patients’ medication schedules or flag social determinants of health challenges such as food insecurity and loneliness. Humana also plans to use Microsoft’s natural language processing and speech recognition to simplify workflows for administrators and clinicians, according to a Microsoft release.

FACEBOOK’S $1 BILLION HOUSING BID — Also on social determinants of health, Facebook announced plans to invest in affordable housing in California, our POLITICO colleague Jeremy B. White reports. Those funds will be used for construction, an affordable housing investment fund and 1,500 housing units for teachers in Menlo Park.

...Among supporters was Gov. Gavin Newsom. “State government cannot solve housing affordability alone, we need others to join Facebook in stepping up,” he said in a statement.

What We're Reading

—Google’s Ruth Porat describes her experience with breast cancer, and optimism that artificial intelligence can improve diagnosis.

—MobiHealthNews’ Laura Lovett interviews Providence St. Joseph’s Sara Vaezy on avoiding “pilotitis.”