September 10, 2020
Maverick's Update
Only What Matters On Health Information Policy
Maverick Health Policy enjoyed the beautiful weather in the D.C. area over the Labor Day weekend so much that we were terribly unproductive. And now it is tough to get going again.
We managed to find three news items on health information issues:
Politico is reporting about a paper, co-authored by self-identified cryptoscientists, that comes to a rather disturbing conclusion: bad people can manipulate COVID-19 exposure notification apps to generate false exposure notifications on a mass scale -- maybe even convincing people to stay home on election day. Yikes.
Grandmas who like computers and other new-fangled gadgets will be able to age-in-place rather than go to nursing homes, according to a new Rock Health report.
For your reading list: A thoughtful Forbes article about how health information exchanges (the author uses the more all-encompassing term “multisided platforms”) can help connect those that need connecting:
- Scientists to COVID data (NIH’s National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C))
- Independent physicians to payers to enter into risk-bearing contracts (Aledade)
- Primary care doctors to specialists for e-consults (RubiconMD)
- Health care organizations to novel technologies (Redox)
One Thoughtful Paragraph
Did you know that September is Public Health Lab Appreciation Month? The Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC) celebrated by focusing its meeting this week on the exciting progress of CDC’s electronic case reporting, or eCR. First launched in April of this year, eCR is the automated submission of reportable diseases from electronic health records to public health agencies. THIS IS ACTUALLY EXCITING because it means that we are finally moving away from providers having to fax, email, or call public health agencies so they can investigate and act on COVID-19 cases in a timely manner. Just a couple of weeks ago, the eHealth Exchange, one of the nation’s largest health information networks, announced the first go-live of COVID-19 eCR with the Association of Public Health Laboratories and OCHIN. If you still don’t think this is exciting, then read this report from Surescripts that describes it as a major milestone of 2020.