ICIT Chastises OPM’s Lack of Modern Cybersecurity in an Official Analysis

The Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT) describes itself as a “nonprofit (status pending), non-partisan group of the world’s most innovative experts and companies that provide technologies and solutions to support and protect our nation’s critical infrastructures.” ICIT serves as a go-between for the private sector, federal agencies, and the legislative community in key areas such as Cybersecurity, Big Data, and Health IT. It is in the scope of Cybersecurity that ICIT performed a recent analysis on the OPM (Office of Personnel Management) Breach which began in March 2014 and was publicly announced in June of 2015.

This official analysis, “Handing Over the Keys to the Castle: OPM Demonstrates that Antiquated Security Practices Harm National Security,” details the most important aspects of the breach. Some of these aspects have not been discussed in the mainstream media including:

• The connection between the VAE, Anthem and OPM breaches
• The legitimacy and confidence we can put in claims attributing the breach to Dark Panda or another Chinese state sponsored group
• Detailed cybersecurity recommendations which would have prevented the outcomes of the attack including analysis around User Behavior Analytics, Governance, Centralized IT Models, Standardization of IT Best Practices, and Continuous Monitoring and Risk Assessment
• The impact of the breach of victims, actions they should be taking, and how their risk level changes based on who is ultimately determined to be the perpetrator of the attack (nation state vs. organized crime syndicate)

For the full article click here

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WEDI-Con: Hospital cybersecurity about investment protection

As Director of IT Security at Children’s National Medical Center, Chad Wilson believes his job is not to “implement a bunch of widgets and speak a foreign language,” but rather to protect the investments of his facility.

Speaking this week at the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange’s annual conference in Reston, Virginia, Wilson and Nathan Gibson, director of IT operations at West Virginia Medical Institute, discussed the challenges of keeping healthcare facilities secure from cybersecurity threats while balancing maintaining provider and patient convenience.

According to Wilson, the most value can be derived from security investments when different technologies play well together. For the full article click here

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Telemedicine market to hit $2.8 billion by 2022

There are no signs the telemedicine market will be slowing down anytime soon, especially in light of a reportfrom Grand View Research Inc. forecasting that the market will reach $2.8 billion by 2022.

Rising consumer demand for the tools will play large part in that growth, according to the report’s authors. They cite an example from Community Care Plan of Eastern Carolina, where the facility was able to double the number of patients it could see a week thanks to telemedicine.

In fact, one new healthcare facility is entirely built on telemedicine. Mercy Hospital’s virtual facility is being called the hospital’s “telemedicine mother ship.” The Chesterfield, Missouri-based system will house all of Mercy’s telehealth programs, which total close to 80. For the full article click here

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Sue Lani Madsen: Affordable Care Act not true health care reform

It’s open season for enrollment in health insurance if you choose to purchase it.

Not much of a choice.

Three years ago the Affordable Care Act went into effect and we all became subject to a penalty for not buying health insurance.

Yes, I know the U.S. Supreme Court redefined it as a tax, the only sales tax for not buying something. The tax has increased each year and is 2.5 percent of income for 2016, capped at $2,085 per household. Households with an income of $83,400 will hit the cap, resulting in middle-income households being taxed at a higher rate than upper earners.

Although most people will buy and few will pay the tax, it’s all part of the frustration that leads to calls to repeal Obamacare.

Personally, our family has opted out under the provisions of 26 U.S.C. §5000A(d)(2)(B)(ii). In plain English, we joined a health care sharing ministry, recognized as one of several acceptable alternatives to purchasing private insurance or signing up for public insurance. For the full article click here

 

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Healthcare Data Security: All Trick and no Treat

It’s the day before Halloween, which means at some point this weekend I will probably tune into one of my all-time favorite horror movies such as Sleepy Hollow, The Conjuring, or any of the Michael Myers classics. But no matter which scary flick I choose, perhaps nothing will be scarier than something I saw recently on healthcare data security.

Here’s what I’m talking about: a report from Accenture found that healthcare providers could potentially lose $305 billion in patient revenue over the next five years due to the impact of cybersecurity attacks. According to a Ponemon Institute survey, cited by Accenture, almost half of patients said they would find a different provider if they were informed that their medical records were stolen.

“Taking into account the estimated lifetime economic value of a patient, Accenture analysis shows that healthcare providers are at risk of losing $305 billion in cumulative lifetime patient revenue over the next five years due to patients switching providers because of medical identity theft,” the report states. “Applying this methodology to recent healthcare provider data breaches, Accenture estimates that each provider  For the full article click here

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Express Scripts, CVS Health Cut Ties With Valeant’s Philidor Rx Pharmacy

Some of the biggest customers of Philidor Rx, the consolidated specialty pharmacy tucked inside embattled drug giant Valeant Pharmaceuticals , are seeing red flags. Two of the nation’s biggest pharmacy benefits managers, CVS Health CVS +0.00% and Express Scripts ESRX +2.30%, both said on Thursday they are cutting ties with Philidor Rx after finding the noncompliance with provider agreements.

The terminations add a new headache to Valeant Pharmaceuticals as it tries to recover from an onslaught of scrutiny from lawmakers, regulators and investors into its business practices.

Valeant is under the spotlight for sharply increasing the prices of drugs it acquires, and it’s now subject to a litany of regulatory investigations into its sales techniques and drug distribution channels. Media probes, meanwhile, have uncovered a tangled web of onceundisclosed specialty pharmacies consolidated inside Valeant that raise questions about management’s forthrightness. For the full article click here 

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Health IT Interoperability: The Battle with Frankenstein Continues…

Victor Frankenstein created his monster with a mix of parts, some chemistry and a touch of alchemy.  Depending on how one looks at the fictional creation, although hideous, it was a successful experiment to create an emotional and sensitive creature. As we approach another Halloween night, health IT has its share of cobbled together solutions that for the most part are working, albeit with a great deal of frustration from both patients and physicians and for the most part on a local level. We have yet to scale the complex castle walls of data access and cross the moat of interoperability.

Much like Frankenstein’s monster, we have learned a great deal about health IT with the nationwide implementation of EHR’s that most physicians have at least some experience with. This was not without a great deal of frustration, expense and increased complexity from a patients’ perspective. Despite what appeared to be a large step forward, EHR’s have actually done little to impact care across the care continuum and between different care locations.

Recently, both congress and patients have raised concerns about this lack of health information sharing. William Herd, chairman of the subcommittee on information technology shared his concerns that service members are being asked to collect paper copies of their medical records as they transition their medical care from the Department of Defense to the VA system. Herd places blame on leadership failures rather than those arising from technical limitations and lack of standardization.  For the full article click here 

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Apps Still Plagued With Security Issues

Apps lacking proper security put user information at risk. This isn’t news, but the number of apps lacking said security is.

In a study conducted by the Imperial College London and Ecole Polytechnique in France, 79 apps were reviewed for the security and encryption. According to mHealth Intelligence, 23 of the mobile health apps actually sent patient identity data over the Internet without any encryption. In addition, researchers found 70 of the apps studied transmitted data to online services. Thirty-eight had mobile health security and privacy policies, but these privacy policies did not explain whether personal information would be sent through these transmissions.

iHealth Beat notes the study focused on apps devoted to self-care for long-term medical conditions, smoking cessation, and weight-loss assistance. Researchers inputted fake patient data into the apps over a six-month period. These were then tracked to check for security features and compared the findings with associated privacy policies. For the full article click here 

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Implications Of Dell’s EMC Buyout

Dell, together with MSD Partners and Silver Lake, will acquire data storage company EMC Corporation for a price tag of $67 billion, marking the largest tech deal in history. The deal will result in the world’s largest privately-controlled, integrated technology company.

The move is anticipated to help Dell diversify from the sluggish PC market and move it into the more profitable markets of for managing and storing data. The deal combines Dell’s server businesses with EMC’s storage and virtualization assets. EMC has a healthcare data analytics division, including clients such as Partners HealthCare, University of Chicago Hospitals and Health System, and St. Luke’s Health System. For the full article click here 

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Google wants to monitor your mental health. You should welcome it into your mind

Next week, Dr Tom Insel leaves his post as head of the US National Institute of Mental Health, a job that made him America’s top mental health doctor. Dr Insel is a neuroscientist and a psychiatrist and a leading authority on both the medicine and public policies needed to deal with problems of the mind. He’s 64 but he’s not retiring. He’s going to work for Google.

More precisely, he’s going to work for Google Life Sciences, one of the more exotic provinces of the online empire. He’s going to investigate how technology can help diagnose and treat mental health conditions. Google doesn’t just want to read your mind, it wants to fix it too.

It’s not alone. Apple, IBM and Intel are among technology companies exploring the same field. IBM this year carried out research with Columbia University that suggested computer analysis of speech patterns can more accurately predict the onset of psychosis than conventional tests involving blood samples or brain scans. Other researchers theorise that a person’s internet search history or even shopping habits (so handily recorded by your innocuous loyalty card) can identify the first signs of mental illness. Computers can now tell when something is about to go terribly wrong in someone’s mind. For the full article click here 

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Is health IT increasing disparities among at-risk populations?

Dive Brief:

• A study of 2,803 patients at four university-affiliated nephrology offices in western Pennsylvania examined access of an EHR portal to manage chronic kidney disease. Patients learned about the portal through pamphlets at the clinics but were not trained on how to sign up or use it.
• Overall, 1,098 participants (39%) accessed the portal. More than 87% reviewed lab results, 85% reviewed their medical information and reviewed or changed appointments, 77% reviewed medication, 65% requested medication refills, and 31% requested medical advice from a renal provider.
• Those using the portal were more likely to have private insurance, be married, white and younger. Those who didn’t access the portal were more likely to be black, enrolled in Medicare or Medicaid, lower-income, older and unmarried, the report stated. For the full article click here 

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Sunflower Diversified creates tools for health-education program

  When Sunflower Diversified Services staff members reviewed a new health-education curriculum, they knew it would be valuable to people with developmental disabilities.

    They also discovered they could add to it.
As a result, Sunflower has created a few new tools to guide people as they look for ways to eat a healthier diet.
One example is a grocery list with photos for those who cannot read, said Brandi Demel, Sunflower’s full-time registered nurse.
“This is a great resource for people at the grocery store,” Demel commented. “As we all know, shopping can sometimes be overwhelming and this photo list of healthy choices comes in handy for our clients with disabilities.”
Sunflower clients also now have access to a tool that illustrates how they can learn about food portions by using their hands as measuring devices.
In addition, a Sunflower case manager created a “Healthy Eating” booklet that provides detailed information about dietary choices, along with encouragement to exercise and drink more water.
The new curriculum is based on a course called Health Matters, which is a roadmap to better lifestyle options, Demel commented. For the full article click here 

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‘Personal health IT’ devices among top IoT uses

When the Harvard Business Review (HBR) checks in on a business or social phenomenon, it’s usually instructive to take notice.

In this instance, the HBR’s online edition looks at the Internet of Things (IoT), and finds that the “quantified self” — using health, personal fitness and wellness trackers to measure basic body metrics — is one of the most popular ways that people actually use the IoT.

For the record, I call this stuff “personal health IT.”

Authors H. James Wilson, Baiju Shah and Brian Whipple of the Accenture consulting firm did an “open analysis” of IoT user behavior at home, examining 1,000 IoT technologies and more than 279,000 early adopter interactions with IoT devices. They found that 80,899 of the interactions involved trackers — the second highest category.

Open source analysis uses anonymized data that has been made publicly available, such as company reports and web site and economic data.

The Accenture guys found the top use of IoT in the home was, perhaps surprisingly, for security applications, such as remote smartphone-controlled home monitoring and surveillance. That use case accounted for 99,207 interactions. For the full article click here 

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HealthData+ Helps Local Health Departments Bring Numbers to Life

Matthew Willis, Marin County’s public health officer, wants to help community members, policymakers, and local health leaders understand why people in the county’s poorest census tract tend to die 17 years earlier than those in the wealthiest. His team has been using data to measure the problem, which is related to stunning disparities in cardiovascular mortality. They also want to use storytelling to promote the solution: universal access to primary care along with early prevention measures.

He’s using HealthData+ to tell that story.

HealthData+ is a pilot initiative, launched this year by the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF). The initiative works with seven California counties to bring their data to life using LiveStories, a data visualization company, that transforms datasets into beautifully designed graphs, charts, and tailored maps. “We built an initiative . . . to help users easily visualize, discuss, and present the data that matters,” says LiveStories founder Adnan Mahmud. “HealthData+ drives storytelling through data — but more importantly, it empowers decisionmakers to drive change.” For the full article click here

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Sunrise Community Health receives $54,250 for patient portal services

Sunrise Community Health received a $54,250 one-time award from the Colorado Health Foundation to increase patient portal use at its 10 northern Colorado clinics.

The grant was award Oct. 20, according to news release from Sunrise.

A portal provides patients with access to their health care information and communication with their health care team through an online, secure health care website.

“We want our patients to have the convenience of electronic access to their health information which ultimately leads to improved health for themselves and their families,” said Lori Hughes, Sunrise’s director of development, in a news release.”

The center will use the funds to purchase technology, training material and invest in translation services. For the full article click here

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Warriors coach Steve Kerr on his indefinite leave and his improving health: “I fully believe that I will be back… before too long”

OAKLAND–Steve Kerr bounded up to his regular seat on the Warriors podium at Oracle Arena a little while ago, maybe walking just a bit more slowly than usual, but looking relatively at ease–and not in serious pain.

Kerr will take part in the championship ring ceremony before the game, but then will leave the coaching to interim Luke Walton; if Kerr is feeling OK, he’ll watch the game from the locker room.

He said there’s also “a decent chance” he’ll go with the team to Houston and New Orleans later this week… and that–as he gradually feels better and starts to exercise–he’s sure he’ll be back coaching at some point this season.

Does he think maybe at least by Jan. 1? Before then? For the full article click here

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RWJ State of Health IT in 2015: Is It Time to Adjust Expectations?

And it’s often both context and perspective that are lacking from the daily snapshots we get of health information technology, meaningful use, interoperability and the progress we are either making or not making, depending on your perspective.

So I welcome a report like the one the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) released last month on the state of health IT circa 2015 in these United States. Subtitled “Transition to a Post-HITECH World,” the detailed report, created in collaboration with the University of Michigan School of Communication, the Harvard School of Public Health and Mathematica Policy Research, takes a 10,000-feet view of the ongoing digitalization of healthcare and what the priorities are as we approach the terminus of HITECH.

But before I delve into what I believe are the more interesting aspects of the RWJF report, I think it necessary to mention some other bits of information that filtered my way this past week. For the full article click here

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Protect PHI security, health data privacy; prep for audits

Experts said that insider threats to health data privacy and PHI security are common, and providers should prep for HIPAA audits by OCR and other federal agencies.

NEW ORLEANS — The insider threat to protected health information (PHI) security is the most common menace to health data privacy.

Meanwhile, it is imperative for healthcare providers to prepare for the new round of HIPAA audits expected soon from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR).These distinct yet interwoven themes emerged at the 2015 American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) Convention and Exhibit from two experts who delivered how-to tips to health information managers and other attendees.

Rob Rhodes, a former healthcare industry CIO turned health data privacy consultant, used an analogy involving the ancient Greek Spartans. The warrior nation was undone by one of their own, Ephialtes, who betrayed the Spartans and helped a Persian army destroy them. For the full article click here 

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Officials put on skids over health spending

The department is introducing budget-blocking, which will restrict officials to procuring and funding services only within its budget.

Once the money runs out, no further funds will be made available and officials will be barred from creating purchase orders.

This move is a significant departure from current practice, which has seen the department frequently spending money even when its budget has been exhausted. The department, as a result, is this year saddled with a debt of R556-million.

The department was allocated a R34.2-billion budget for this financial year.

In a written response to the provincial standing committee on public accounts, the department reveals that it has historical accruals brought into the new financial year. For the full article click here 

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The Ambivalent Marriage Takes a Toll on Health

Every marriage has highs and lows from time to time, but some relationships are both good and bad on a regular basis. Call it the ambivalent marriage — not always terrible, but not always great, either.

While many couples can no doubt relate to this not bad, but not good, state of affairs, new research shows that ambivalence in a relationship — the feeling that a partner may be unpredictable with his or her support or negativity — can take a quiet toll on the health of an individual.

The findings, published this month by researchers at Brigham Young University, are part of a growing body of research that attempts to parse the so-called marriage benefit, the well-established notion that married people are, over all, far healthier and live longer than the unmarried. But increasingly, researchers are trying to understand the more nuanced effects of marriage on health. To reap the health benefits of marriage, is it enough to just be married? Or how much does the quality of the marriage, such as the level of support, warmth, negativity or controlling behavior, affect the health of seemingly stable couples? For the full article click here 

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Applying Airbnb Data Principles to Health IT Interoperability

When we look outside the walls of traditional medicine, we can find innovative solutions that when applied appropriately, can create unforeseen benefits. Stuart Kauffmann, an evolutionary biologist and complexity systems researcher, proposed a theory where biological organisms can morph into more complex systems that expend less energy.  The idea of increasing the complexity to gain some increased benefit has been applied to areas outside living organisms with some success.

Airbnb disrupted the hospitality industry. It depends on high data volume coupled with batch analytics to derive meaning and results from the data collected.  Orbitz found surprising insights when they began to look outside the industry standard data being collected. They found people who used their services from an Apple device spent as much as 30% more per night on hotel rooms. For the full article click here 

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Consultants Deloitte Australia hired to help deliver Transforming Health reforms

A MULTINATIONAL consultancy firm has been hired to help deliver Transforming Health reforms, but the State Government is refusing to reveal how much the contract will cost taxpayers.

Deloitte Australia has been named the “implementation partner” for the government’s $250 million health overhaul, but in an emailed statement, SA Health said it could not reveal the cost of the contract.

“Due to the commercial contractual arrangement with Deloitte Australia, SA Health is unable to disclose the value of the agreement,” the statement said.

“Transforming Health is the largest health reform seen in this state and to successfully implement these vital changes requires skills and expertise not ordinarily embedded within a health agency.”

SA Health chief executive David Swan told staff about Deloitte’s appointment via an internal email on October 9.

“Deloitte will establish a 20-strong team to work closely with the local health networks and the department to help deliver on the Transforming Health reforms,” he wrote. For the full article click here 

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Inexperienced nurses a ‘rural reality,’ Central Health says

Central Health disagrees with accusations made by the nurses union that workers in rural sites are overworked and understaffed.

“Our rural reality is that it’s very difficult and challenging to recruit and retain nursing staff,” said Trudy Stuckless, chief nursing officer with Central Health.

“In many of our rural sites, there will be times when the nurse only has a year’s experience.”

In those cases, Stuckless said, nurses are given a “robust education.”

She said nursing staff will now be offered training opportunities in larger emergency rooms in Gander and Grand Falls-Windsor to help them adapt. For the full article click here 

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Huntington health care reps ‘hopeful’ after Obama announces plans to fight drug epidemic

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Huntington health care representatives who attended President Barack Obama’s drug forum in Charleston last week applauded his efforts to tackle the drug epidemic in West Virginia and nationwide.

“He can make a real difference right now,” said Michelle Perdue project coordinator of Cabell County Substance Abuse Prevention Partnership, following the President’s address at the Roosevelt Neighborhood Center Wednesday. “Especially when he talked about early intervention and speaking with children. That’s our passion is making sure that we try to prevent people from going down that path to begin with.”

“We’ve been waiting on this for a long time,” said Amy Saunders, director of student health education programs at Marshall University. “We need funding and resources for the whole gamit of treatment and substance abuse.” For the full article click here 

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ER docs say insurance trends will keep health care spending high

Dr. Stephen Epstein has seen it first-hand: patients with dwindling health insurance benefits forgo some of their care, only to end up in worse shape in his ER.

“What we’re finding is patients are cutting back on necessary care,” said Epstein, who is a spokesperson for the American College of Emergency Physicians and an emergency physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “They are delaying things like they can’t afford their medications and do For the full article click here 

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Health Law’s Revamped Site, HealthCare.gov, to Debut on Sunday

WASHINGTON — Starting on Sunday, health care consumers shopping on the Affordable Care Act’s federal website, HealthCare.gov, can see the cost and benefits of insurance plans for 2016, the Obama administration said Friday. But they will have to wait a little longer for new features that will allow them to search for plans that cover specific doctors and prescription drugs, administration officials said.

“The consumer experience this year will be easier and faster,” said Andrew M. Slavitt, the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, unveiling a website that has been overhauled and improved. “The response time will be 40 percent faster than last year.”

Administration officials gave journalists a preview of the new website on Friday. Consumers can begin “window shopping” for health plan options on Sunday. Actual purchasing of plans begins Nov. 1, the first day of open enrollment. For the full article click here 

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‘A Week 4 Life’ hosts art expo to gauge feelings toward sexual health

A Week 4 Life hosted an art expo to showcase participants’ feelings toward sexual health through photography, painting, song and spoken word Thursday night in the Shalala Student Center.

The organization is a programming board dedicated to educating the University of Miami community on issues regarding HIV/AIDS and reproductive health. It was their fifth annual art expo.

“We wanted to think of a creative way to get our message out there and promote the organization,” said Morgan McClure, education chair for A Week 4 Life.

Sophomore Antonio Mercurius wrote an original poem specifically for the event.

“Being a Black, gay male, HIV and AIDS [is]a very serious thing especially, being from D.C. where AIDS is a top thing there. It’s something that hits close to home,” said Mercurius. For the full article click here 

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Texas Orders Health Clinics to Turn Over Patient Data

The fight over Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood moved to Texas this week.

Three days after Gov. Greg Abbott announced his decision to end Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, state health department investigators showed up on Thursday at Planned Parenthood health centers in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Brownsville with orders to turn over thousands of pages of documents, including patients’ records and employees’ home addresses and telephone numbers.

For example, Planned Parenthood South Texaswas told to produce five years of records — whether electronic, paper or ultrasound — concerning any patients billed to Medicaid who had an abortion in which any part of the fetus was removed or preserved for research use. Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast was to turn over a complete copy of certain patients’ records, including doctors’ orders, nursing notes and lab tests, as well as the center’s appointment books, patient sign-in sheets and contracts. For the full article click here 

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Solid Clinical Recommendations

Now that we have broad deployment of electronic health records, how do we make recommendation systems trustworthy?

 

In a recent article, Peter Bregman described a rapid escalation of anger between a father (Bregman) and his daughter over the messiness of a project that happened to involve child play with sand. He was making the point that parents, and managers in general, should adopt a simple and effective approach to communication by verbally  For the full article click here 

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Breaking Down the Evolution of Healthcare Cybersecurity

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, but healthcare cybersecurity should be a top priority for covered entities year-round. However, the evolution of healthcare cybersecurity has been interesting, and data security experts state that the industry has come a long way. Even so, healthcare still has a long way to go when it comes to data privacy and security issues.

The Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT) Co-founder and Senior Fellow Parham Eftekhari talked to HealthITSecurity.com about Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and what essential areas organizations across all sectors should understand in terms of data security.

It’s currently imperative for organizations to understand that they’ll never be able to prevent breaches from happening, according to Eftekhari.

“The best way to protect their organization is to focus on detect and response strategies, and create as many roadblocks and obstacles as possible so network administrators can quickly identify unauthorized access or suspicious activity on the network,” he explained. “[It will] slow down the attacker’s ability to successfully exfiltrate data and really give the network administrator time to stop the attack.”  . . .

For the full article click here

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Consumers’ Choice health plan shuts down

Consumers’ Choice Health Insurance Company will not offer coverage next year in the Health Exchange, leaving its 67,000 subscribers to find another plan next year, state insurance officials said Thursday.

“They are in a financially hazardous condition,” Ray Farmer, director of the state Department of Insurance, told The Greenville News.

“I did not have faith in their financial ability to conduct business throughout the entire year of 2016,” he added. “At some point in time, we would have had to take some action because of their financial condition.”

Farmer said that subscribers can continue to use their benefits through Dec. 31 and that all claims will be paid. Providers can be assured of payment as well, he said.

“For those people insured by Consumers’ Choice, their policy is still good through the end of the year,” he said. “And they should continue to pay premiums throughout the end of the year as well.” For the full article click here 

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Attacks on Churches and Women’s Health Clinics Are Domestic Terrorism

Churches have been on fire all around Ferguson, Missouri, this month, and by that I mean mostly black churches. The press isn’t talking about it much. Last Saturday, theUnited Believers in Christ Ministries became the fifth church in the area to be set on fire. A sixth church was set ablaze Sunday, and a seventh church was set on fire Thursday. Five of these have been at black churches, while the sixth was at a mixed church and the most recent fire at a largely white church. In every incident, authorities suspect arson. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is involved in the investigations. In each case, the church’s front doors were sprayed with accelerant and set on fire; in most cases the damage has not been too extensive. The first six fires happened in predominately black neighborhoods within a three-mile radius of Ferguson. For the full article click here 

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A New Attack on Health-Care Reality

The cataract of insurance co-op failures—nine down, 14 to go—has liberals defensive over ObamaCare. Most amusing is their attempt to blame this debacle conceived by liberals and perpetrated by liberals on, yes, Republicans.

The federally sponsored co-ops were designed as an alternative to for-profit insurers, and they’re now going insolvent one by one. The emerging sentimental narrative is that a “Republican filibuster” in the Senate in 2009-10 prevented Democrats from adopting the White House’s preferred public option, and therefore naturally the inferior co-ops were bound to have problems.

The apologists pushing this excuse would be more convincing if they weren’t rewriting the recent past that everybody remembers. The public option—Medicaid for all—was supposed to be an opening wedge for single-payer health care. But the idea didn’t die because of Republicans, who were shut out of four of the five committees that wrote ObamaCare and with merely 40 Senators were helpless to stop so much as a swinging door. For the full article click here 

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The possible downside of data sharing in healthcare

Many in healthcare agree that big data, data analytics and data sharing in healthcare are important. In fact, many are greatly investing in these areas. For example, Marc Probst, CIO at Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, said his organization is heavily investing in data analytics and John Halamka, CIO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston is a huge advocate for data sharing, especially because data sharing and data analytics helped his wife overcome breast cancer.

However, a Bloomberg Business article argues otherwise.

Based off the documents of a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) investigation, the article recounts the experience of two women –a mother and a daughter — back in 2008. A clinician called up the daughter, who was a prospective customer applying for health insurance, to ask her why she had left the names of several medications she was taking off the application she submitted to Aetna, the article said.

The clinician then proceeded to name the medications, the dates they were prescribed and the doctors who prescribed them. But the woman insisted that the information was wrong, the article said. As it turns out, those medications were her mother’s, and this slip-up inadvertently exposed medical conditions the mother had been hiding from her daughter.For the full article click here 

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23andMe is ready to start providing limited health data again

It has been almost two years since the FDA ordered online genetic testing firm 23andMe to stop offering its health screening service. Now, the company has jumped through all the necessary regulatory hoops to begin offering health data again. However, the service will be much more narrow in focus than what it was offering previously.

23andMe offers genetic testing kits for $199 (sometimes less when it’s on sale), and they’ve been available this whole time. The company has always offered ancestry analysis (e.g. where in the world your genes might come from) in addition to health screening, and that part of the service was unaffected by the FDA action. Prior to the FDA-mandated end of disease reporting, 23andMe would show users the estimated likelihood they would develop a certain disease — specifically, how their risk compared to the general population. For the full article click here 

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Ministry Health Care to cut 500 jobs

MILWAUKEE — Ministry Health Care said Wednesday it plans to cut the equivalent of 500 full-time jobs across its statewide network of hospitals and clinics, including those in central Wisconsin.

“This is never an easy decision,” Ministry CEO Daniel Neufelder said late Wednesday afternoon in an interview with Gannett Central Wisconsin Media. “We recognize the decision to reduce the size of our workforce will impact many of our friends and colleagues.”

Ministry is based in Milwaukee but it is a major employer in central and northern Wisconsin, with hospitals and clinics in Marshfield, Weston, Wausau and Stevens Point, among other locations. It has 15 hospitals and 46 medical clinics in total across the state, and employs nearly 10,000 people.

Affinity Health System, which is owned by Ministry and includes clinics and hospitals in and around the Fox Cities, also will be affected by the cuts. For the full article click here 

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HiNZ 2015: National child health IT platform scores early wins

The introduction of an IT platform by the Midlands Health Network that can track a child’s health milestones from birth to six has been able to identify over 6000 kids in the Waikato who have missed oral health checks over the last year, potentially saving the district health board millions in the cost of anaesthetising children for tooth extractions.

Midlands Health Network’s service manager for child health Bronwen Warren told the Health Informatics New Zealand (HiNZ) conference in Christchurch yesterday that the National Child Health Information Platform (NCHIP) that has been rolled out in the Waikato had also scored some early wins in linking up newborns with GPs, identifying newborns who had missed metabolic screening tests and ensuring children are immunised as close to the schedule as possible.

NCHIP has been built by Orion Health in association with the Best Practice Advocacy Centre and is set to roll out in Tairawhiti next month, followed by Taranaki in January and the Lakes region in March. The gradual roll-out is part of plans for a national system that will eventually cover all children up to the age of 18. For the full article click here 

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Navigating the Maze of Electronic Health Records

Christine Bechtel dropped off a copy of the Fed­er­al Re­gister at her doc­tor’s of­fice. The con­sumer ad­voc­ate was in the midst of a pro­longed battle to ob­tain elec­tron­ic cop­ies of her health re­cords from a primary care prac­tice whose em­ploy­ees seemed be­fuddled when told they had to provide them.

So Bechtel showed them the rules, and by the end of the roughly two-week or­deal, she had two files of health data, al­beit in a rather out­dated me­di­um: a CD-ROM.

Bechtel de­tailed her dif­fi­culties in get­ting her own pa­tient data at a June Sen­ate Health, Edu­ca­tion, Labor, and Pen­sions Com­mit­tee hear­ing, her an­ec­dote serving as a snap­shot of the prob­lems plaguing elec­tron­ic health re­cords that the pan­el hopes to fix in a med­ic­al-in­nov­a­tion bill likely to be in­tro­duced this year. For the full article click here 

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Column: The sick would pay more under Jeb Bush’s health care plan

Last week, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush put forward a health care proposal as part of his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. The plan, which has many moving parts, is intended as a replacement for the Affordable Care Act. If you don’t anticipate getting sick, you might like it.

Instead of health care exchanges and mandated insurance, Bush’s plan would provide tax credits for buying catastrophic coverage. This means the government would pick up a substantial share of the cost of a plan that has a large deductible, with the insurance kicking in only after a person had paid close to $7,000 out of his or her own pocket, or $13,000 for a couple.

At the same time, the Bush plan would eliminate the requirement that insurers disregard pre-existing conditions.

Under the ACA, a person with cancer or diabetes can sign up for insurance and pay the same premium as a healthy person of the same age. While the Bush plan does include some protections, it does not guarantee coverage at an affordable price. In this respect, the Bush plan is quite explicitly designed to shift costs from the more healthy to the less healthy.

The goal of the ACA is to get everyone into a common pool and share the costs, regardless of whether we have good fortune in terms of our health. It doesn’t do this perfectly, because there are still choices on coverage levels—consumers who choose gold plans are in a different pool from those who choose silver plans, and so forth—but this is its general direction.

The Bush plan would take the country in the opposite direction, making it much easier for healthy people to avoid paying the cost of treating the ill. For the full article click here 

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FDA Clears 23andMe For Health and Carrier Status Testing

Things are looking up for 23andMe. Right off a fresh $115 million cash infusion, the Food and Drug Administration is giving the direct-to-consumer DNA company the green light to include health and carrier traits, along with ancestry reports.

This was not the scenario two years ago when the FDA put a moratorium on 23andMe’s ability to provide any health information associated with its personal genome test.

The FDA, concerned 23andMe might illicit a false positive for certain types of diseases, wrote at the time:

“The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is sending you this letter because you are marketing the 23andMe Saliva Collection Kit and Personal Genome Service (PGS) without marketing clearance or approval in violation of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (the FD&C Act).

This product is a device within the meaning of section 201(h) of the FD&C Act, 21 U.S.C. 321(h), because it is intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or is intended to affect the structure or function of the body.”

Some might draw the similarities between Theranos’ current FDA struggle and 23andMe. The blood test startup valued at more than $9 billion and backed by the likes of Henry Kissingerrecently came under fire for questions about the accuracy of its test results and the revelation that its proprietary ‘Edison’ machine currently processed only one of its 240 tests. The startup pulled back under regulatory pressure. For the full article click here 

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Madison IT start up forges connections in health care

A local health IT startup recently announced it has raised $3.5 million in investments to expand staff and further market their product.

Redox, a Madison-based startup, will receive money from .406 Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners and HealthX Ventures, according to a release. The investments will primarily be used to increase staff in order to meet the growing demand for their system, Niko Skievaski, Redox co-founder, said.

Former Epic employees founded the startup, which is working to streamline health care by allowing health-related apps to access data from various health care systems, Skievaski.

Redox was founded in the summer of 2014, Skievaski said. It started as an incubator, but as they began to work with more health care technology companies they quickly discovered integration of health records was a major issue, Skievaski said. For the full article click here 

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Daily Grind: What does The Kiwi Health Detective do?

What do you do as The Kiwi Health Detective?

The main thing is helping people recover from chronic illnesses that tend to be classified as untreatable or incurable. People come to me after they’ve been to multiple specialists. I mainly deal with things like chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia – I help them understand the cause. I also focus on stress and anxiety reduction. Research shows that 80 per cent of illness is caused by stress. Trapped emotional energy is a big factor in physical symptoms. Healing is about becoming aware of oneself and understanding how to live under the laws of health instead of against them.

How did you become a therapist?

I was diagnosed with clinical depression in my late 20s. I was then also diagnosed with chronic fatigue in my mid-30s. I didn’t want to take medication so I started to look for solutions. After about five years of being unwell, I decided to do something I’ve always wanted to do if I only had a few months to live. So I sold my house and set off on a round the world trip and that was the beginning of me understanding why I was ill. It took about 10 years to get well. I realised I needed to deal with my emotions from the past, I knew what I had to work on. I don’t think I could help people if I hadn’t gone through it myself. I’ve tried about 200 different types of therapies so I know what’s out there.  For the full article click here 

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Automated Real Time Threat Detection with Behavioral Analytics

Automated Real Time Threat Detection with Behavioral Analytics Cybersecurity experts all agree, that in most cases, the data necessary to detect an insider or cyber attack is already being captured by the organization. After virtually every breach and compromise, digital forensics are able to reconstruct the actions of the persons or entities involved based on exisiting logs and data. Forensics by definition is too late! Automated Behavioral Analytics and machine learning can detect threats as they are unfolding in real time, leveraging those same logs and data. Finding threats before the damage is done is critical, and only through the use of signatureless and automated analysis can this be accomplished consistently. Join Securonix and Carahsoft for a User and Entity Behavioral Analytics (UEBA) webcast. Principal Architect and Industry expert, David Swift, will discuss key use cases and capabilities.   Attendees of this webcast will learn about: Advanced techniques to automate discovery of Insider Threat Machine learning of normal behavior and detection of changes in order to reveal compromised accounts and systems User and Entity Behavioral Analytics (UEBA) Interested but cannot attend? Sign up to receive the archived recording of the presentation. Questions? Contact me. Ryon Williams Securonix Government at Carahsoft Technology Corp. 703-871-7472 (Direct) 888-554-7468 (Toll-Free) securonix@carahsoft.com http://ift.tt/1ZUhE7e Webcast Details   Thursday, November 5, 2015 2:00pm ET; 11:00am PT Duration: 1 Hour Featured Speaker   David Swift Principal Architect Securonix

 

 

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What Are Top Healthcare Mobile Security Concerns?

Healthcare mobile security is an increasingly important issue in the industry, especially with more providers implementing BYOD strategies and connecting to outside networks.

Employees need to have a comprehensive understanding of how to use mobile devices in a way that doesn’t compromise patient information, and healthcare organizations also need to ensure that they have the necessary security measures in place.

Insight Enterprises recently released its top five areas in healthcare mobile security that organizations need to stay mindful of, including securing endpoints and networks, and also staying aware of all compliance areas.

HealthITSecurity.com will break down the different areas and examine if they are top areas of concern when it comes to healthcare mobile security.

The five key factors are as follows:

• Purpose-built for healthcare
• Compliance savvy
• Accommodates unstructured data
• Secures endpoints and network
• Flexible deployment

In terms of having software specifically built for healthcare, Insight explains that it is important for providers to have this option to better sort through healthcare data, such as patient identification numbers and medical terms. This is definitely a strong point, and was further discussed in a recentarticle by HealthITSecurity.com contributor Bill Kleyman.

According to Kleyman, it is especially critical to find third-parties that understand the healthcare space when it comes to integrating new technologies, such as cloud computing. For example, there are now segmented environments designed to process PHI securely.

“This gives healthcare organizations the chance to offload specific workloads and extend it into the cloud,” Kleyman wrote. “The key is ensuring that your point-to-point connections are secure and that there is constant visibility between data migration. Otherwise, crafting the appropriate SLA and ensuring you have the right kind of cloud architecture for your healthcare data is not a bad way to go.”For the full article click here

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Many Low-Income Workers Say ‘No’ to Health Insurance

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — When Billy Sewell began offering health insurancethis year to 600 service workers at the Golden Corral restaurants that he owns, he wondered nervously how many would buy it. Adding hundreds of employees to his plan would cost him more than $1 million — a hit he wasn’t sure his low-margin business could afford.

His actual costs, though, turned out to be far smaller than he had feared. So far, only two people have signed up.

“We offered, and they didn’t take it,” he said.

Evidence is growing that his experience is not unusual. The Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, which requires employers with more than 50 full-time workers to offer most of their employees insurance or face financial penalties, was one of the law’s most controversial provisions. Business owners and industry groups fiercely protested the change, and some companies cut workers’ hours to reduce the number of employees who would be eligible. For the full article click here

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Grand plan to develop a single national electronic health record for Kiwis

A single national electronic health record system will be developed in New Zealand over the next three to five years.

Health minister Jonathan Coleman made the announcement this morning at the Health Informatics New Zealand conference in Christchurch.

Dr Coleman, together with the Health IT Board, commissioned an independent report on the benefits of a single electronic health record earlier this year.

This review by Deloitte was recently completed with a key finding that there is growing international support for adopting a strategy for electronic health records where a single record is introduced to join up information currently held in a smaller number of electronic medical record systems.

Dr Coleman says the findings suggest creating a single record that physically consolidates health information in one place will improve decision support and care coordination, especially for complex patients with multiple long-term conditions. For the full article click here

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Turning the Clock Forward on Health Disparities, City Block by City Block

In America today, a person’s ability to lead a long, healthy life is so impacted by where they live that it’s startling. You don’t need to travel to a developing country to see communities that have been left in the last century. Stand in the lobbies of some of our largest and most celebrated hospitals and look outside, and you will see urban communities burdened by staggering mortality rates. If you ride a few subway stops or walk a few neighborhood blocks, you travel even further back in time.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), where you live has a greater impact on your life expectancy and overall health than your genetic code. For example, if you look at the neighborhoods of Boston, you will see that its Roxbury neighborhood has the lowest life expectancy — 58.9 years, according to U.S. census data. That life expectancy is shorter than in many third-world countries and is similar to how long the average American lived in the early 1920s. In New Orleans, the divide is so pronounced that a person’s life expectancy can vary as much as 25 years between neighborhoods just a few miles apart.

These types of disparities cost the United States up to $309 billion annually and, if eliminated, would prevent up to 80,000 early deaths each year. Chronic diseases — including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and heart disease — disproportionately affect underserved communities.

Geography has such an extensive effect on health because it determines access to care, information, services and healthy foods. We must tackle them community by community, reaching people where they spend time — in their homes, schools, neighborhoods and faith-based communities. For the full article click here

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Pass the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act now

Chris Harper Mercer was not the first person alleged to have serious mental illness to go on a shooting rampage. Before Mr. Mercer killed nine people in Oregon, a review of all mass shootings since 1982 found an estimated 58 percent of the 72 were by someone with mental illness. There have been at least three since I started investigating the nation’s mental health system after the massacre at Newtown as chair of the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.

But while high-profile acts of mass violence by people with untreated serious mental illness captures public attention, it was the pain and suffering of those with untreated serious mental illness and their families that stunned my committee. We found that in spite of 112 programs spending $130 billion annually on mental health, at least 164,000 of the most seriously mentally ill are homeless, 365,000 are incarcerated, 770,000 are on probation or parole and 95,000 are regularly denied a hospital bed because of the bed shortage. Of the 41,000 who die by suicide, more than 90 percent have a mentall illness. We also found people with a serious mental illness are more likely to be victimized and die earlier. For the full article click here 

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America’s ‘sickness care’ system: Putting profits over health

Modern medicine has one purpose: to make money for the pharmaceuticals and their army of “trained practitioners” while funneling money through insurance companies under the false label of “healthcare.” It’s really just “sick care,” and anyone in America seeking serious health attention must take personal responsibility, pursue alternatives and pay for it out of his own pocket.

I will quickly give you a valid exception and that is if one needs trauma care. It is generally and quickly available and most of the time lifesaving, as America’s trauma physicians and practices are among the best in the world. But this is a very small part of medical practice in America.

In fact, there is now very high risk in going to the hospital. Besides hundreds of thousands of drug-induced and medical-error-induced deaths each year, people who check into hospitals are dying unexpectedly of infections that antibiotics can’t help. Old, old infections are laughing at our modern multitrillion-dollar medical empire.

The first premise of modern medicine is to avoid simplicity and cheap health solutions. Boy, have they ever done this. They have succeeded in leading the sick public to feel helpless and hopeless in taking responsibility for their own health. They have successfully destroyed what used to be just common sense. For the full article click here 

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Assistant Health Minister Pru Goward says wind turbines must be probed over ‘pressure waves’

Assistant Health Minister Pru Goward has triggered divisions within the Baird government and drawn flak over her call for a probe into the health impacts on residents living near wind farms.

Ms Goward, whose roles include minister for Medical Research and Minister for Medical Health, used a public forum in Yass to throw her support behind complaints that wind turbines caused headaches and other sickness.

“Increasingly, I am [of] the view that there is some validity on the health effects” of wind farms, Ms Goward was reported in the Yass Tribune as saying on Friday. “There are a number of people with health problems…it is clearly not psychosomatic.”

Ms Goward went further on Monday, telling Fairfax Media turbines’ blades created pressure waves that “resonate in the skulls” of people living as far away as five kilometres. For the full article click here 

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Aetna, Humana, Centgene and Health Net: Key votes loom

Shareholders will get their say this week on two proposed health insurer mergers: Aetna’s $37 billion offer for Humana, and Centene’s $6.3 billion bid for Health Net.

The major independent proxy advisors, Institutional Shareholders Service (ISS) and Glass Lewis & Co., have given both deals a green light, and Aetna and Humana investors are scheduled to vote on Monday afternoon. Centene and Health Net shareholders will cast their ballots Friday afternoon.

The votes, which come three months after the deals were announced, are an important step in the process. However, regulatory approval for the transactions deals is expected to extend well into 2016.For the full article click here 

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Community Health Alliance ending coverage for 27K enrollees

Community Health Alliance will no longer offer insurance coverage next year, forcing about 27,000 enrollees to find new health insurance plans.

The Knoxville-based health insurance cooperative, created under the Affordable Care Act, will continue to pay out existing claims but will wind down its coverage by not taking on new customers.

The decision was based on the co-op’s financial condition, according to the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, and ends months of uncertainty about its future. The alliance had stopped selling its plans on the federal exchange in January after its low-cost plans attracted more enrollees than expected, and their ability to handle the high volume came into question.

“This was not a decision that the Department took lightly, but it was the right decision,” Julie Mix McPeak, commerce and insurance commissioner, said in a statement. “With thousands of Tennesseans’ coverage hanging in the balance, CHA’s financial success could not be guaranteed. Ultimately, the risk of CHA’s potential failure in 2016 was too great and would have caused substantial detrimental effects on the market as a whole if it were to collapse.”

Policyholders will keep their insurance coverage through 2015 as long as premiums are paid. They must re-enroll in a new health care plan during the Open Enrollment period, which begins Nov. 1. To receive coverage in 2016, consumers must enroll by Dec. 15, according to the department. For the full article click here 

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Health IT Expert Urges Providers, Vendors to Take Action for “Person-Centered Interoperability”

Last month, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report, “Nonfederal Efforts to Help Achieve Health Information Interoperability,” in which representatives from 18 health information exchange (HIE) initiatives described a variety of efforts they are undertaking to achieve or facilitate electronic health record (EHR) interoperability. The stakeholders involved concluded that to date, interoperability has remained limited.

The stakeholder and initiative representatives GAO interviewed described five key challenges to achieving EHR interoperability, which are consistent with challenges described in past GAO work. Specifically, the challenges they described are (1) insufficiencies in health data standards, (2) variation in state privacy rules, (3) accurately matching patients’ health records, (4) costs associated with interoperability, and (5) the need for governance and trust among entities, such as agreements to facilitate the sharing of information among all participants in an initiative.

The report also found that changes to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS’s) Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs would also help move nationwide interoperability forward. Specifically, representatives from 10 of the initiatives noted that efforts to meet the programs’ requirements divert resources and attention from other efforts to enable interoperability. For the full article click here 

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ARRA/MU Stage 3: Imaging Implications

With the recent publicity surrounding the publishing of the ARRA/MU Stage 3 rules, I decided it was time to weigh in with respect to the impact on imaging.  I think there are some interesting prospects for meeting Stage 3 objectives in terms of imaging content and technology.

Objectives 5 (Patient Electronic Access), 6 (Coordination of Care through Patient Engagement, and 7 (Health Information Exchanges, or HIE) all have potential impact.  One aspect of the Stage 3 rulings involves the introduction of the concept of API’s (Application Programming Interfaces) in conjunction with CEHRT (Certified Electronic Health Record Technology).  All reference patient involvement with respect to the “viewing, download, transmission, and access” to patient information.  As defined in previous stages, patient information can include image content.

A key aspect of the Stage 3 ruling is the timeframe for accessibility by the patient.  The ruling addresses patient access within 24 hours of availability to the EP (Eligible Physician).  I know from personal experience with my provider, this will be a challenge!  Currently, lab tests are available in this time frame, but radiology results take substantially longer, as they are printed and scanned into the EHR (Electronic Health Record).  It can take weeks before they appear to me in my patient portal!

Clearly, this would need to change to comply with Stage 3.  And, this is only the report!  At present, there is no ability to access images associated with the report – short of requesting a CD at the time of the exam – something a less-savvy patient is not likely to do. For the full article click here 

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The BMI approach may not measure up as a health-indicator for fashion models

It started, as most online movements do, with a selfie. In March, Australian model Stefania Ferrario posted a nearly nude photo of herself to Instagram, her doe-eyed gaze fixed intently on the beholder, hands cupping her breasts and the words “I am a model” scrawled across her taut stomach. Its caption was a call to action, asking retailers to drop the “plus” qualifier from clothing lines and agencies to refer to models of all sizes as just “models.” Pushback against skinniness is common in the fashion industry, a response to top-tier designers and agencies that have established a hierarchy that promotes young, thin models to the top of the talent roster and relegates everyone else with a sizerelated qualifier to the bottom.

Deciding how to evaluate what constitutes a “natural” or healthy size is a whole other issue. Supermodels like Karlie Kloss and Jourdan Dunn populate their social-media profiles with images of vigorous workouts and tales of clean diets, insisting that a size two can be achieved through a healthy lifestyle, not just starvation and cigarettes. And on the “plus size” end of the spectrum (which is, officially, anything above a size 14), U.K.- based model Rosalie Nelson started a petition asking that the United Kingdom follow France’s crackdown on “dangerously underweight” models during London Fashion Week in September. It’s since garnered more than 55,000 signatures and is currently under parliamentary review.

France’s solution was to pass a bill banning the hiring of models whose body mass index (BMI) is lower than 18 (or approximately 121 pounds for a 5-foot-7 model). Any agency employee caught doing so could face up to six months of jail time and a fine of €75,000. Israel, Italy and Spain have also adopted legislation that prevents the hiring of models according to BMI. But the industry is divided about whether tracking BMI, a tool that was invented in the 1800s to measure total body mass based on height and weight, will result in positive change. For the full article click here 

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Washington Debrief: CHIME Reacts to MU Final Rules

Key Takeway: Last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a final rule impacting the meaningful use program. The rule combined modifications to the current reporting years—2015-2017—as well as Stage 3 criteria. Simultaneously, regulations were issued for the 2015 Edition of Certified EHRs.

Why it Matters: Having heard concerns from providers about the 365-day reporting period, including strong advocacy from CHIME and CHIME members, CMS modified Stage 2 to incorporate a 90-day reporting period in 2015. While several members are positioned to take advantage of this shorter period, others will be challenged to meet it since there are fewer than 90 days remaining in the year. CHIME will continue to advocate for CMS to implement a hardship exemption for those unable to meet this timeframe.

Unfortunately, the agency decided to move forward with Stage 3 rulemaking. CHIME, other healthcare associations and members of Congress had urged CMS to hold off on issuing a final rule in order to ensure that it is in sync with new payment models being advanced by Medicare. Delaying rulemaking would also give stakeholders time to address such key issues as interoperability before moving forward. However, in a rare move, the administration published this regulation as a “final rule with comment,” leaving open the opportunity for the industry to provider further input into the policymaking process. CMS will be accepting comments on the Stage 3 portion of the rule only. For the full article click here 

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Health of Ontario’s health system mixed, report finds

Ontarians continue to struggle to get quick appointments with family doctors and diabetics still don’t get regular eye exams despite ongoing efforts to improve the health system in these areas, according to a new report.

Health Quality Ontario, the provincial agency that monitors the province’s health system, has also found some patients still do not receive sufficient follow-up care after hospital discharge. They include those suffering from mental health problems, addictions, heart failure and lung disease

A 120-page report, Measuring Up, which was tabled in the Legislature on Tuesday, flags problems with long-term care waits and pressures on caregivers.

And it shows that the system performs worse in some parts of the province, particularly the north. For the full article click here 

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Personal Diabetes Data Now Accessible via Smartphones

A novel device enables people with diabetes to discreetly and conveniently view their insulin pump and continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) information on a smartphone.

The MiniMed Connect is a secondary display device that securely transmits pump and sensor glucose data from the patient’s MiniMed insulin pump to a smartphone app via Bluetooth, providing real-time glucose and insulin information every five minutes. Besides Smartphone display of information, MiniMed Connect also allows caregivers to monitor the data via CareLink, a therapy management website that delivers preset notifications via text messaging when the person with diabetes experiences sugar levels that go too high or too low, or when an alarm on the pump isn’t cleared. For the full article click here 

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Physical health of mentally ill people ‘ignored’

People in England who have had mental health problems are five times as likely to be admitted to hospital as an emergency as those who have not, a study shows.

But the Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation think tanks found most admissions were for physical ailments.

Researchers said the findings suggested the NHS was too often treating mental health conditions in isolation.

Overall, just 20% of admissions were explicitly linked to mental health.

Instead, mental health patients were more likely to be admitted as an emergency for what are usually routine problems like hip replacements.

The think tanks looked at more than 100 million hospital records between 2009-10 and 2013-14 for people with mental health problems and those without. For the full article click here 

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Task Force to Add Health IT Interoperability ‘Exemplars’

The Health IT Policy Committee (HITPC)’s task force on addressing barriers to healthcare interoperability met on Oct. 9 to review the Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap, which was released in final form last week by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). The group discussed ways in which aspects of the Roadmap could be integrated into a final HITPC report due to Congress by the end of this year.

The task force, which has drafted out four major recommendations, now plans to include examples in those areas to add clarity and provide the basis for immediate action, according to chairman Paul Tang.

The four recommendations are:

1) Convene a major stakeholder initiative co-led by the federal government (e.g., ONC and CMS) and private sector to act on the ONC Roadmap to accelerate the pace of change toward interoperability.

2) Develop and implement meaningful measures of health information exchange (HIE)-sensitive outcomes for public reporting and payment.

3) Develop and implement HIE-sensitive performance measures for certification and public reporting.

4) Set HIE-sensitive payment initiatives — including performance measure criteria — and a timeline for implementation that establishes clear objectives regarding what must be accomplished under alternative payment models. For the full article click here 

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Health Application Security Lacking, Study Finds

As more healthcare organizations implement mobile devices, health application security is essential. However, if a recent research study is any indication, mobile applications have room for improvement when it comes to privacy and security features.

Sixty-six percent of apps sending identifying information over the Internet did not use encryption, according to the recent study published in BMC Medicine, while 20 percent did not have a privacy policy.

“Privacy badging of websites has been found to lead to modest benefits in the extent to which information uses and security arrangements are openly disclosed,” the report’s authors explained. “However, the privacy assurances offered by app programs are largely untested. In late 2013, one service had to suspend its approval program after some apps were found to be transmitting personal information without encryption.”

For the study, researchers reviewed 79 different mHealth apps, available on Android and iOS platforms. The apps covered numerous health and wellness areas, including smoking cessation features, weight loss assistance, and self-care for long-term medical conditions. Researchers then analyzed the apps over a six-month period during. During that time, patient data was fabricated and inputted. From there, the data was tracked to check for security features and results were compared to associated privacy policies.

While no app collected or transmitted information that a policy explicitly stated it would not, 78 percent of information-transmitting apps with a policy did not describe the nature of personal information included in transmissions, according to the study. For the full article click here 

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6 things that make digital health investors go hmmm

In the past few weeks of attending digital health conferences, I’ve picked up on a few themes based on investment priorities identified by some venture capitalists and others offering startups advice. But even when investors are bullish, questions linger on the strength of their bets. I’ve outlined a few here but feel free to share your own observations in the comments section.

The Rock Health Summit, Stanford Medicine X and Health 2.0 each had strong representation by behavioral health technology companies and a steady stream are making funding announcements. As entrepreneurs like David Cohn noted earlier this month, mental health has always been separate from the rest of healthcare, making access more difficult, reimbursement limited and reigning in chronic conditions more challenging.

But with depression as a potential cause of some chronic conditions and barrier to managing them, some see technology from supplementing underserved areas through telemedicine to improving care coordination, and providing peer support as a way to begin to bridge that gap. Companies such as SilverCloud, Prevail Health, Lyra Health, and Big White Wall, represent a handful of them. For the full article click here 

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Bush to mention IT in his health plan

BUSH TO PUSH PRIVATE HIT LEADERSHIP: GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush will outline his health care ideas this morning at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. Some eHealth items are front and center in the plan, which centers on replacing the Affordable Care Act. In an outline distributed to the news media, Bush said he wants to “promote private sector leadership” of health IT adoption and enable better access to de-identified Medicare and Medicaid claims data. He also says he’d review regulatory barriers to health innovation as president. No details on any of these goals. Hopefully more meat will be added to the bone this morning. Bush, a cousin of athenahealth CEO Jon Bush, is the first Republican presidential candidate to mention eHealth issues in his health agenda. For the full article click here 

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