Morning Headlines 1/10/17
St. Jude releases cyber updates for heart devices after US probe
St. Jude Medical, which was recently acquired by Abbott Laboratories for $25 billion, releases a software patch intended to address cybersecurity vulnerabilities discovered in its heart implants. The vulnerabilities were made public several months ago by short-selling firm Muddy Waters and security firm MedSec, and nearly derailed the acquisition.
CMS reports that the 2017 ICD-10 code update will prevent it from processing data reported for certain quality measures during Q4 2016, and as a result says that it will not apply PQRS payment adjustments to those affected.
President Obama talks to Vox about Obamacare’s future
In an interview with Vox, President Obama discusses his disappointment with the pace of digitalizing and sharing medical records, saying “it’s a lot slower than I would have expected; some of it has to do with the fact that it’s decentralized and everyone has different systems. In some cases, you have economic incentives against making the system better; you have service providers — people make money on keeping people’s medical records — so making it easier for everyone to access medical records means that there’s some folks who could lose business. And that’s turned out to be more complicated than I expected.”
Sylvia Burwell Remarks at the National Press Club
In her farewell speech, departing HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell warns against repealing ACA without having a comprehensive replacement in place.
RE: Surescripts survey finds that more than half of of patients have experienced delays or disruption in getting their prescriptions…