Weekender 10/30/20

Weekly News Recap

• HHS/ONC extend the dates for Cures Act compliance.
• Several US hospitals report cyberattacks as the federal government warns that Russian hackers are targeting 400 of them for ransomware, with payment demands of $10 million and more.
• Allscripts and Cerner report quarterly results, with both beating earnings expectations but falling short on revenue.
• HHS releases a final rule that requires insurers to report their negotiated provider rates and patient out-of-pocket costs for 500 shoppable services.
• Blank check company Health Assurance Acquisition Corp., formed by departing executives and backers of Livongo, prepares for an IPO of up to $500 million.
• The VA goes live on Cerner at its first site.

Best Reader Comments

Cerner put on a pretty good Cerner Health Conference given the limits of a virtual platform. The puppy and kitty cams were a nice touch. Exhibits were pretty boring — not sure how to replicate the real-time repartee even with vendors whose services you don’t need. The Cerner solutions center was a better experience and the ability to have a scheduled 15 min Zoom session with a solutions expert was much better than clustering around and fighting your way to the front to ask a 30 sec question at the in person event. Some of the most interesting workshops had a cap on attendance and they didn’t seem to record those sessions for later viewing which was unfortunate. Overall, they’ve done the best job that I’ve seen of a virtual conference. (CernerSuperUser)

Regarding the lab interface being down and no one noticing: I think every internal business user should have the expectation that their internal IT department will monitor functioning of business critical interfaces and similar processes like file transfers and ingestion. If you had outsourced operation of your IT to a vendor, you’d certainly cover things like that in a Service Level Agreement and you’d make plenty of noise if the vendor didn’t meet the SLA. If I was a lab internal customer, I’d ask the IT department 1) Is the interface between the EHR and the lab system monitored by tools for both up/down status and throughput? What are the performance thresholds for throughput that are considered acceptable? 2) Who is in IT is responsible for receiving the alerts from the monitoring tools? 3) What is your requirement for how quickly your people respond to an alert indicating a serious system or interface down condition? 15 minutes? 4) What do you consider prime hours for the lab-EHR interface? 7 x 24 including holidays, or something less than that? (Vendor Mgmt Guy)

Concerning hospitals and HIEs not allowing individual providers access to information in their systems … would this not constitute a form of information blocking? (Bill Marshall)

The training that Dr. Jayne describes would be to the level that I would be comfortable with the scribe process. That level of training is not what I see in the field today. Third party vendors who hire med school applicants, pay them $8-10 and hour, while charging $30-50 with a ‘training’ package of working with another scribe for a couple weeks — quickly weaned to a couple clinicians. Virtual scribing is even more problematic in my mind — communication is tough enough when you can see the patient and clinician — think about all the connection issues between the phone, the computer, the security of access, etc. Plus, in a clinical environment you can control who is in the ‘room’ with you. However, how do you do that when the scribe is sitting at their kitchen table while the family is making breakfast? And remember, these kids aren’t making enough to have an office they can secure themselves in. (AnInteropGuy)

In the early days (i.e March) patients had similar Dx codes to Sepsis – as that appeared to what was happening as well Covid Dx codes. I would hope that by now we’d know the difference of dying WITH Covid verses OF Covid. My guess someone from the Commercial Carriers would be able to chime in on this. Either way, I suspect some claims are stretched, but the vast majority are coded correctly. Also… if you are looking for conformational bias…. you can find it. (Silence Dogwood)

Watercooler Talk Tidbits

Readers funded the Donors Choose teacher grant request of Ms. P in Minneapolis, who asked for math tools for her class of Pre K-2 students. She reported in March, “Thank you so much for the hands on tools we received! Students have enjoyed learning how to use them. They have been really helpful to all students because they are hands on tools. Research shows the best way to learn is by doing something and repetition. You’ve made that possible. Students can create graphs, solve algebraic problems with the balance and use the hundreds place value mats combined with our blocks to build numbers. The mini clocks have been a hit! We are appreciative of your donation.”

Flint, MI pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha, MD, MPH donates her American Public Health Association 2020 Fries Prize of $60,000 to fund a pediatric public health fellowship. She found from analyzing Epic patient records that Flint’s water supply had high levels of lead due to a water supply change, triggering state and federal emergencies. 

Teens as young as 16 are working as volunteers in Czech Republic hospitals that have had 15,000 workers, including 3,000 doctors, sidelined by COVID in the country of 10 million. Czech Republic’s infection in rate is among the highest of major countries, six times higher than that of the US.

The mother of a 14-year-old who receives brain cancer treatment from the National Institutes of Health emails staff to see if Dr. Anthony Fauci could drop by for a selfie. Fauci said no because of social distancing, but offered to FaceTime with Benjamin Ciment, who asked him if he was relaxing (no, but hanging there, Fauci said), laughingly confirmed that NIH has a painting of him on the wall that Benjamin had seen, and asked Benjamin if his hair was dyed. Benjamin said the hair color is due to his chemotherapy treatments, to which Fauci said, “Is it really? That’s one of the positive things of the medicine —  it looks kind of cool.”

In Case You Missed It

• News 10/30/20
• EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 10/29/20
• HIStalk Interviews Cary Breese, CEO, NowRx
• News 10/28/20
• Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 10/26/20
• HIStalk Interviews Paul Ricci, CEO, SOC Telemed
• Monday Morning Update 10/26/20

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