Epic chops down App Orchard fees

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

Editor’s Note: This edition of Free Morning eHealth is published weekdays at 10 a.m. POLITICO Pro eHealth subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 6 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro’s comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here.

HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES? Epic has announced program fee reductions of 33 percent to 80 percent for developers participating in its App Orchard program, according to sources at the company’s annual developers meeting at Epic’s Verona, Wisconsin headquarters.

“I’m very happy with the changes,” said Rick Freeman, CEO of Interopion, whose complaint earlier this year about exorbitant prices for participation in vendor app stores — as reported by POLITICO —may have helped spur the action. Freeman noted at the time that a family planning questionnaire app he developed for HHS’s Office of Population Health could have cost him up to $750,000 to run on Epic or Cerner for a year.

Epic will charge lower fees for most of the 350 companies that participate in its app development program, said App Orchard director Brett Gann. It will enable early-stage startups to enroll in the program with access to Epic’s public API documentation and sandboxes for $100 per year until their apps are ready to be commercially used.

EHRA GROUP WANTS HHS TO USE PDMP GRANT DOLLARS: In a chat with Morning eHealth, two members of EHRA’s opioids task force said they’re hoping HHS can use some of the grant money doled out by the SUPPORT Act (H.R.6) to help harmonize data standards governing prescription drug monitoring program standards — which sometimes make life difficult for clinicians trying to combat the opioid crisis.

Allscripts’s Leigh Burchell and Foothold Technology’s David Bucciferro argue that the disparities among state PDMPs and the laws governing them often create obstacles for cross-state users to access or make use of the data. For example, Maryland allows nurses to access its state PDMP; but if a Maryland nurse tries to query Pennsylvania’s database, he or she will be blocked because nurses aren’t granted access. Pennsylvania also doesn’t allow EHRs to store PDMP data. States have different standards for which data is stored, when it can be uploaded and who gets to access it.

Burchell and Buccifero are hoping that grant money under CDC’s control in the new opioids legislation can be used to promote common standards among states and help eliminate the problem.

eHealth Tweet threadof the day: Eli Van Allen @VanAllenLab Thinking about physician burnout during the “major upgrade” of our electronic health record system this week → EHR continues to violate just about every basic user interface/design principle (and in some cases impressively managed to make things worse)

With colleagues in clinic this week - we’re all once again trying to find where/how to order stuff or locate patient data that was moved or do just about anything in this “upgrade”.

It’s ... something.

It would be wonderful if folks from just about any reasonably successful tech company could send their most junior UI/UX people on an educational service mission to Verona, Wisconsin.

It’s FRIDAY at Morning eHealth. Your author has tickets to an upcoming performance of Fiddler on the Roof... in Philadelphia. Where should she and her companion get a pre-show cocktail? Hip Philly hot spots and news tips go to [email protected]. Reach the rest of the team at @arthurallen202, @dariustahir, @ravindranize, @POLITICOPro and @Morning_eHealth.

Join POLITICO Playbook Co-Authors Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman for a special Playbook Elections event in Pennsylvania to discuss the 2018 midterm cycle and issues shaping the races. This event, part of the POLITICO-AARP Deciders series, will feature an exclusive conversation with elected officials, addressing issues that matter most to voters.

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS FOR ACUTE CARE HOSPITALS: Ninety-three percent of non-federal acute care hospitals have already adopted the 2015 Health IT Certification criteria or plan to upgrade to those standards, and they’re sharing more patient data than they ever have, ONC officials wrote in a blog post Thursday. About 88 percent of hospitals can now electronically send patient summaries of care to outside sources, and 74 percent are equipped to receive those records. But only four in 10 hospitals have mastered all four components of interoperability: finding, sending, receiving and integrating patient data from outside health systems. “[M]ore can be done to address interoperability barriers and inject market competition back into healthcare,” ONC’s Don Rucker and Talisha Searcy wrote.

BENCHMARKING HEALTH CARE PRICES: The Washington, D.C. metro area’s health care prices were 13 percent below the national average in 2016, and similar to those in Kansas City, Mo., according to a new interactive analysis published by the Health Care Cost Institute. That group is led by former CMS chief data officer Niall Brennan. Baltimore had the overall lowest price level, 33 percent below the national average; Anchorage was the highest at 65 percent above. (Try it out and let us know what you learned!)

NEW ADDICTION AWARENESS CAMPAIGN: Now that President Donald Trump has signed the comprehensive bipartisan bill H.R. 6 (115) responding to the opioid crisis, HHS is launching a new campaign highlighting civil rights protections for people with addiction, our colleague Brianna Ehley reports.

As we’ve reported, the massive opioid package includes several health IT provisions, including ones that remove barriers to reimbursement for telemedicine treatment and authorize CMMI to run a pilot incentivizing behavioral health providers to adopt health IT.

Discrimination in health programs, including addiction treatment, has created barriers to care and delay or prevent people from seeking the services they need, Brianna writes — so the civil rights office released a list of best practices for providers to follow to ensure these services are available to everyone.

President Donald Trump says a red wave is coming on Election Day. Is he right, or will the tide turn blue? Compete against the nation’s top political minds in the POLITICO Playbook Election Challenge, by correctly picking the winning candidates in some of the most competitive House, Senate and gubernatorial races in the country. Win awesome prizes and eternal bragging rights. Sign up today: Visit politico.com/playbookelectionchallenge to play.

UPDATE ON FCC’S ECONOMICS AND ANALYTICS OFFICE: The FCC said it’s nearing the launch of a new office meant to boost economic analysis in its policy making, an initiative Chairman Ajit Pai began early in his tenure at the agency, our colleague Margaret Harding McGill reports.

The Office of Economics and Analytics has received the approvals necessary to get the office running by the end of the year, the FCC said.

As we reported in August, the agency is also moving forward with a plan for a $100 million telehealth program that would fund remote monitoring projects to help low-income Americans.

ICYMI — PRINCE HARRY DONS A SLEEP TRACKING RING: Prince Harry was seen wearing a mysterious black ring that turned out to be a $300 fitness tracker called an “Oura,” NBC reported. The device monitors sleep, activity, heart rate, temperature and other factors and uploads them to the wearer’s phone. Could this app have helped enable the siring of the latest royal offspring-to-be?

ON TAP NEXT WEEK: The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s annual meeting, Oct. 31-Nov. 2., which includes sessions on the opioid crisis and telemedicine.

—A piecein the Economist examines ways to make AI training mainstream

—The MIT Technology Review reportson socioeconomics’ eugenics problem