October 21, 2022
Maverick's Update
Only What Matters In Health Information Policy
When you think of Marvin Hamlisch, you probably think: “Oh, that guy that wrote The Way We Were for Barbara Streisand” or “that guy that composed the music for A Chorus Line.” If you still don’t know who he is, maybe look him up -- everyone should know about a guy who got into Juilliard when he was 6 years old. We were surprised to learn that he also wrote the famous James Bond theme song “Nobody Does It Better” sung so effortlessly by Carly Simon. We are thinking about that song this week because the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) -- the 007 of health care -- published a report on physician burnout. We explain in the One Thoughtful Paragraph how NAM is shaking up the industry by suggesting that technology and improved data exchange can help clinicians.
Other big health data news from people who obviously like their martini shaken, not stirred:
The FTC granted an extension of the deadline for comments on its data privacy proposed rule to November 21, 2022. Last week, the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) conference featured a discussion with FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter about the FTC’s plans for new privacy rules.
In an event with the Washington Post, the Biden Administration’s Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology, Anne Neuberger, shared that healthcare infrastructure security is one of the White House’s key priorities, announcing that cybersecurity standards and guidelines are coming.
ONC published a blog post about predictive decision support tools -- warning that it is the data quality challenges in software development that make or break their reliability.
One Thoughtful Paragraph
Amazon’s Prime Video is running a documentary right now on all the James Bond musical themes called The Sound of 007. Some of the most famous musicians of all time composed themes for the long-running films, including Marvin Hamlisch, who -- with his cheeky lyrist -- composed The Spy Who Loved Me theme song Nobody Does It Better. It is a nod to the fact that James Bond is just the best at all of the things he is best at -- just like the National Academy of Medicine (“NAM”). Founded as the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1970, NAM is a private, non-profit organization that is part of the National Academy of Sciences (part of the Congressional charter organization established in 1863 that gathers our country's exceptional scientific leaders). In health wonk circles, NAM is most famous for its reports in 1999 (To Err is Human) that addressed patient safety solutions to medical errors and 2001 (Crossing the Quality Chasm) that made words like "evidence-based" and “patient-centered" and “transparent” a standard part of health care policy discussions. This week, NAM announced a new report on clinician burnout -- arguably the biggest crisis of our current health care system. Most interesting to us in the 88-page report are the five recommendations about how to streamline prior authorization processes with automation and clinical decision support tools. This is pretty timely of the usually slow-moving NAM, because the annual regulatory burden report of the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA represents 55,000+ medical practice executives across all specialties) just said that the slow-moving prior authorization process is one of the biggest burdens on physicians. CMS is also expected to propose a rule soon (currently under consideration by the White House Office of Management and Budget) that would require health plans and providers to streamline prior authorization processes. Cue the brass... as James Bond said: “Where there is smoke, there’s fire.”