Interopability projects maturing

With help from Arthur Allen (@arthurallen202) and Mohana Ravindranath (@ravindranize)

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Quick Fix

— Interop projects maturing: Two key interoperability projects are announcing new policies to spur data-sharing.

— Study shows health improvements from PDMPs: New research in this month’s Health Affairs offers a novel conclusion: prescription drug monitoring programs do more than reduce opioid prescriptions. They also improve health.

— Hurricane triggering HIE work: Florida’s health information exchange is starting up its emergency response feature, we’re told.

And more. But first, the jump.

eHealth tweet of the day: Genevieve Morris @HITpolicywonk “[on recent controversy over whether patient access rule should include privacy protections] Such mixed feelings here. I want every single patient to have easy access to their health info. But they shouldn’t have to pay for it with their data. Free isn’t free at this point.”

WEDNESDAY: Happy almost-fall everyone! Your correspondent had a very nice Labor Day weekend, listening to Cate Blanchett read from artists’ manifestos (at the Hirschhorn here in D.C.) and kayaking a bit. How’d you spend your long weekend? Share at [email protected]. Talk fall plans socially at @arthurallen202, @dariustahir, @ravindranize, @POLITICOPro and @Morning_eHealth.

Driving the Day

INTEROP PROJECTS MATURING — Two top interoperability projects hit important milestones today. Here’s our rundown:

— TEFCA: ONC this week selected interoperability-focused nonprofit, the Sequoia Project, to serve as the coordinating entity overseeing part of its Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement project.

The project is intended to provide a method for different health information networks to communicate with one another, and the various interoperability groups whose work would be overseen by Sequoia appear to be on board. The CommonWell Alliance plans to become one of many planned Qualified Health Information Networks, which will agree to exchange health data, a spokesperson told Morning eHealth.

The Sequoia Project will also choose and monitor QHINs under its cooperative agreement with ONC, funded for $900,000 in the first year.

— Center for Medical Interoperability: The Nashville nonprofit is announcing its testing program for medical devices today. The project, dubbed C4MI Verified, ensures that medical devices communicate vital sign data in a common language. Presently, CEO Ed Cantwell said in an interview, “each of the vendors may have a different definition of blood pressure [or] pulse rate,” which befuddles providers monitoring patients and complicates hospitals’ efforts to mix and match different devices.

Instead, hospitals often purchase one vendor’s entire suite of products for a given type of care, ensuring they have “almost a monopoly” in a given area, Cantwell said. He said C4MI is focusing on developing programs for different episodes of care — for example, pediatric code blues — he said, and Cantwell anticipates hospitals will begin purchasing products that conform to the center’s testing program. The organization’s board of directors includes representatives from heavy hitter hospital groups like Ascension Health and Hospital Corporation of America.

STUDY: HEALTH IMPROVEMENTS FROM PDMPs — While there are tons of articles demonstrating that mandating providers use prescription drug monitoring programs reduces the rates of opioid prescriptions, many have questioned whether this simply pushes patients into using more dangerous, illicit drugs like heroin and fentanyl. A new Health Affairs study finds that, in aggregate, emergency department and hospital stays decrease — demonstrating, if accurate, that PDMPs improve health.

That doesn’t mean use of the databases aren’t pushing patients down a dangerous path, but it does mean the total effect is positive, study co-author Jason Hockenberry told us.

STORM TRIGGERS HIE ACTIVITY IN FLORIDA — Audacious Inquiry and the Florida Health Information Exchange have turned on the state’s Emergency Census Service to support response efforts around Hurricane Dorian, Audacious Inquiry president Scott Afzal told POLITICO. (Florida’s HIE is an Audacious client.)

The Emergency Census connects acute and post-acute providers through a network accessible by state health agency officials, who can enter lists of individuals thought to be missing in the aftermath of a hurricane; the census can help locate them if they have been registered at a connected facility in the state. The service was used to located hundreds of displaced people after Hurricane Michael in 2018, Afzal said.

ICYMI: SURESCRIPTS-PILLPACK FIGHT — You might not have noticed while you were packing up for a little Labor Day jaunt, but we published a look at the Surescripts-PillPack fight that’s been bubbling up over the past month.

The conflict is over strategically important data — medication history — which, per Surescripts’ rules, is not supposed to go to pharmacies. That’s a bottleneck in the market, claim critics of the e-prescription network.

Meanwhile, Amazon subsidiary PillPack has also gotten rapped by critics for aggressive tactics in seeking to grow. Take a look at the whole story, for Pros.

INTERFERENCE ON WIRELESS NETWORKS SHORT-CIRCUITS HOSPITALS — A Mexican firm’s wireless network tests short-circuited a range of medical equipment in nearby El Paso, our Tech colleague John Hendel reports.

The testing, conducted by a firm called Altán Redes, brought down ambulance defribillators and a local hospital’s wireless network.

The issue is riling officials like Sen. Ted Cruz, who brought the problem to FCC chair Ajit Pai and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a letter. Pai and his Mexican counterpart say they’re trying to hash out the issue.

CONGRESS UPDATE — A pair of bulletins to share from Congress:

— Senate approps season beginning: The Senate Appropriations Committee’s markup of the Labor-HHS-Education bill is due to begin Sept. 10, our Budget and Appropriations colleague Caitlin Emma reports. Besides the annual agita over the precise funding levels for ONC and other HHS agencies, we’re keeping an eye on the Senate’s interest in overturning the prohibition against using federal funds to develop a unique patient identifier.

— EHRA comment: The Electronic Health Records Association is not fond of a provision in the Senate Finance Committee’s drug pricing legislation. The bill would include real-time benefit tools — which electronically tell providers the price of drugs — in the definition of a qualified EHR for ONC’s certification program.

The seemingly minor change would confound a long development process, forcing EHR vendors to develop a new feature that’s not ready for prime time, the association claims in a comment letter. The proposed standard is beta, and none of the relevant networks have comprehensive coverage of all the insurance plans.

The bill has already cleared the Senate Finance Committee, but the House and Senate HELP committees are also examining the drug pricing issue.

LOBBYING NOTE — Insurer Humana has joined the Consumer Technology Association, the trade group announced. It’s the first insurer to do so.

PERSONNEL NOTES — Lauren Silvis, the former FDA chief of staff, has joined cancer-data startup Tempus as its senior VP of external affairs. Her former boss, Scott Gottlieb, tweeted his congratulations … Raquel Bono, the head of the Defense Health Agency, is departing. She sat for a departure interview, and discussed MHS Genesis, with Government Matters. … CMMI’s Health IT, Interoperability, and Artificial Intelligence lead Lisa Bari has departed that agency to do health IT consulting, she tells Morning eHealth.

What We're Reading

The New York Times covers the dispute between big health care provider groups and data liberationists over patient privacy and unfettered access to data.

Wired has a long feature on the effort to bring DNA sequencing to bear on kids whose diseases can’t be diagnosed.

The Detroit Free Press covers Michigan officials’ warnings over a do-it-yourself rape kit test.