8/06/19
Maverick’s Update: What Matters to You About Health Policy
You may be on vacation, but regulatory news will not rest: Medicare will pay more for new medical technologies according to a new final rule, and will require hospitals to use the most updated E.H.R. technology to promote interoperability.
At the White House Blue Button Developers Conference, CMS announced a new pilot to allow physicians to request a Medicare beneficiary’s claims data from CMS to “fill in information gaps” and CARIN announced a new data model to help plans implement the CMS interoperability proposed rule. The new data model will be tested by 20 organizations.
McKinsey released a paper about how payers can use digital health tools rather than be conquered by them; and The Chartis Group published something similar for health systems’ technology investments.
One Thoughtful Paragraph
Who is evaluating health care apps? Well, the British are on it, and the EU had a working group take a shot at guidelines pre-GDPR. But the American attempts to assess health care apps are a bit more disjointed(shocker). Our FTC, OCR, and FDA share limited jurisdiction over mobile apps. In the private sector, we have AMA-HIMSS-American Heart Association-DHX Group collaboration Xcertia, a non-profit MIT spinoff project called Ranked Health, and the Anxiety and Depression Society of America review of mental health apps. Criteria are being offered to physicians about how to evaluate apps: health and well-being apps, mental health apps, and apps targeted for high-need high-cost patients. With the trust issues associated with apps that are so widely publicized, it seems like we need a solution (where is Consumer Reports?) for this problem.