Congress thought about doing away with ONC in Cures

With help from Darius Tahir (@DariusTahir) and Arthur Allen (@arthurallen202)

POLITICO PRO EXCLUSIVE: GOP’S NAGGING HEALTH IT PARADOX: Congress considered abolishing ONC as part of its work related to 21st Century Cures, according to Hill offices and others familiar with their work. It was seen as a way end doctors’ and hospitals’ headaches with EHRs. Instead, lawmakers gave HHS’s small health IT office more responsibility, making it more bureaucratically ingrained and harder to kill in the future. So goes Republicans’ love-hate relationship with regulation and improving EHRs.

While conservatives despise regulation, those serving in Washington appear to have no good way to solve the issues vexing health IT’s maturation without more government involvement. Cures gave HHS much more authority and responsibility fixing EHRs, addressing performance issues and mandates that doctors have complained turned them into data-entry clerks, just as small government-minded Republicans take over the department.

What experts are saying: “While there have been people who have advocated for eliminating ONC, I think it is more likely that a new secretary, who was concerned with the size of government, would narrow the focus of ONC to the specific authorities assigned to the office and scale back on the number initiatives that ONC takes on,” said Jodi Daniel, policy chief at ONC before leaving in 2015.

Adder Robb Walton, former health aide to Sen. Bill Cassidy: “I believe the focus going forward was to work on figuring out how to define the scope of ONC’s authority and trying to implement policies, either through legislation or other oversight action to refine the definition of ONC as a ‘coordinator’ instead of an ‘administrator.’”

Find the full story from yours truly here.

WELCOME, SEC. SHULKIN: The Senate late Monday voted 100-0 to confirm former health care administrator David Shulkin to run the Veterans Affairs Department. The overwhelmingly positive vote was expected given his bipartisan support. Shulkin ran the Veterans Health Administration under the Obama administration. He has been an advocate of moving to a commercial EHR system and using telemedicine and other digital health tools in the VA health system.

Pro Defense’s Connor O’Brien has more.

VA TO KEEP EPIC SCHEDULING SOFTWARE IN PILOT STATUS: VA officials will move ahead on an upgrade of its internal medical scheduling software while they continue a pilot using Epic Systems software, Pro eHealth Editor Arthur Allen scoops. A formal announcement is expected today. The VA is in the midst of a $624 million contract with Epic to create a commercial scheduling project, being piloted at a Boise, Idaho, facility. That project will move forward, according to VA source.

More from Arthur: The source “said IT officials believed the internal work could provide short-term value over the next 18 months, by which time the value of the Epic software project, called the Medical Appointment Scheduling System, would be clearer.” More for Pros.

eHealth tweets of the day: Deven McGraw @HealthPrivacy:Don’t whisper sweet nothings in my ear — send them by encrypted email. #healthpolicyvalentines

Stuart Portman @sportmanMPH:No ACO would take these risks. ICD-10 had no code for this love. But rulemaking with you Is my fav type of gov. #healthpolicyvalentines

Christina Perez, MHA @CPerezMHA:Roses are red
Violets are blue
Don’t take the back row to #MACRA
Measures are a treasure #healthpolicyvalentines

Welcome to Tuesday Morning eHealth where your author passes along a motivational statement to all you single people that he overheard this weekend. “If the Patriots can come back from 28-whatever to win the Super Bowl, I can find love this year.” Share you love stories and story ideas at [email protected] and connect with us on Twitter @ David_Pittman, @ arthurallen202, @ DariusTahir, @ POLITICOPro, @ Morning_eHealth.

NOW ON TWITTER: HHS Secretary Tom Price has a new Twitter account; @SecPriceMD. Unlike his congressional account or his processors, Price’s new handle carries the “M.D.” suffix.

NEW ACO EVIDENCE PUBLISHED: Some of Medicare’s first shared savings accountable care organizations helped create a 9 percent drop in post-acute care spending after three years. Harvard researchers compared ACOs before and after the switch to the Medicare program with providers who remained unaffiliated with an ACO in the same period. The work was published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

“These findings are relevant to three major considerations facing policymakers: (1) concerns about the harms of consolidation, (2) the amount of risk bearing needed to produce changes in behavior, and (3) how to manage potential conflicts between alternative payment models,” write Dartmouth health policy gurus Carrie Colla and Elliott Fisher.

GIVE CMMI OVERSIGHT TO CONGRESS, LETTER URGES: A group of health care industry groups calling for an overhauled CMS Innovation Center say Congress should be able to intervene in the centers experiments, but notes CBO scoring rules might prevent that from happening. When Obamacare created CMMI, it gave the HHS secretary power to expand Medicare payment models without approval from Congress. But critics, including newly sworn in Secretary Tom Price, say Medicare officials over often overstepped their bounds.

--“Clearly establishing CMMI’s role to verify ‘proof of concept’ and Congress’s role to act on that proof would help build the trust and confidence needed to ensure CMMI’s success,” the Healthcare Leaders for Accountable Innovation in Medicare wrote Monday. Read the rest of their six principles here.

UTAH’S TELE-ABORTION BAN PUT ON HOLD: A state bill that would ban using telemedicine to issue abortion-inducing medication in Utah was tabled in a Senate committee Monday, “allowing more time for public comment before lawmakers decide whether to recommend it to the full Senate,” according to a local news report. The bill will be considered again in a meeting today.

FLORIDA TO HOLD OFF ON TELEMEDICINE’S MARIJUANA BAN: The Florida Board of Medicine punted on a proposed ban on prescribing medical marijuana via telemedicine, according to minutes of this month’s board meeting recently posted online. At the board’s Feb. 3 meeting, about a half dozen people spoke against the ban including board member Enrique Ginzburg, noting it would limit access to patients who would otherwise benefit from medical marijuana. A couple spoke in favor of the ban. For now, the board plans to reconsider the ban at its April meeting.

FIRE UP YOUR COMPUTERS: CMS is accepting submissions for how to shape future iterations of MACRA’s Merit-Based Incentive Payment System. Stakeholders can offer their suggestions on how MIPS judges quality, EHR use and clinical improvement activities. Recommendations will be accepted through June. CMS is hosting a webinar Thursday to offer an overview of its annual call for measures.

PERSONNEL MOVES:

A former acting CDC director and ABC News’ current chief health and medical editor, Richard Besser, has been named president and chief executive of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation’s largest charitable foundation devoted to health care.

The National Association for Trusted Exchange (or NATE, for short) named 360ofme, a website that allows patients to cobble together their medical information from disparate EHR vendors, as its newest member.

Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy and former CDC Director Tom Frieden will speak at the American Telemedicine Association’s April annual conference in Orlando, the ATA announced. They will share “insights on how they use telehealth to advance medicine, healthcare and wellness.”

HAPPENING TODAY:

9:30 a.m. — CMS town hall on new medical services and technology add-on payments, 7500 Security Boulevard, Baltimore, Md.

10:30 a.m. — House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing on the VA’s medical claims processing, 334 Cannon House Office Building

Noon — Medical R&D Caucus briefing on Medical Innovation 101, 2045 Rayburn House Office Building

Got an event coming up? Send the details to [email protected].

WHAT WE’RE CLICKING:

Birth-control on-demand app trolls President Trump in marketing campaign.

JAMA commentary “The Challenges of Generating Evidence to Support Precision Medicine.”

One entrepreneur shares his thoughts on how to build a health care company that seeks to overcome cultural resistance to technology.

How data helped Texas Children’s Hospital improve care.

More than 7 million patients use remote monitoring or connected health devices, a new report claims.

Two-of-five data breaches in health care aren’t reported in the 60-day window that HHS requires, data find.

Tips, comments, suggestions? Send them along via email to our team: Arthur Allen ([email protected], @ArthurAllen202), David Pittman ([email protected], @David_Pittman) and Darius Tahir ([email protected], (@DariusTahir).