Month: March 2019
March 28, 2019 | Electronic Health Records | Hospitals | Legislation and Public Policy | Medicare and Medicaid
On March 27, the Innovation Center at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced an artificial intelligence contest. The CMS Artificial Intelligence (AI) Health Outcomes Challenge, in collaboration with the American Academy of Family Physicians and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, is looking for innovative technology and strategies to predict health outcomes,
Read MoreMarch 27, 2019 | Eric D. Fader | Cybersecurity | Electronic Health Records | FDA | Legislation and Public Policy | Medical Devices and Wearables | Telehealth
Medtronic PLC self-disclosed last week to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that an unspecified problem in the wireless technology of 19 models of the company’s defibrillators makes them vulnerable to being hacked. The company said it is not aware of any cyberattacks, privacy breaches, or patient harm related to the 750,000 vulnerable devices.
Read MoreMarch 26, 2019 | Eric D. Fader | Affordable Care Act | Legislation and Public Policy | Private Insurers
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced on March 22 that the state will create its own health insurance exchange for plan year 2021, replacing the federally run healthcare.gov marketplace. Gov. Murphy also gave notice of the change by sending a Declaration of Intent Letter to the federal government’s Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight.
Read MoreMarch 21, 2019 | Eric D. Fader | Electronic Health Records | Medical Devices and Wearables
A new three-year study at the University of Michigan’s medical center will examine whether data collected on Apple Watch, along with other health information, can be useful in analyzing patients’ health. The MIPACT (Michigan Predictive Activity and Clinical Trajectories) Study has already begun with 1,000 participants, and thousands more patients are expected to enroll over the
Read MoreMarch 20, 2019 | Eric D. Fader | Hospitals | Legislation and Public Policy | Private Insurers
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators is at work on federal “surprise bill” legislation that may be officially proposed within weeks. The proposal will target the common scenario in which an insured individual receives covered healthcare services from an in-network hospital, surgery center, imaging center or laboratory, while an out-of-network healthcare provider also provides non-emergency
Read MoreMarch 19, 2019 | Eric D. Fader | Electronic Health Records | False Claims Act | Fraud and Abuse | Hospitals | Legislation and Public Policy | Litigation | Medicare and Medicaid
A three-month joint investigation of electronic health records (EHR) systems has culminated in a release of a March 18 article in Kaiser Health News (KHN) and Fortune Magazine, “Death By 1,000 Clicks: Where Electronic Health Records Went Wrong.” The lengthy, meticulously sourced article calls EHR systems “an unholy mess.”
KHN and Fortune have made the
Read MoreMarch 14, 2019 | Rivkin Rounds Staff | Home Health | Hospitals | Legislation and Public Policy | Medicare and Medicaid
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines social determinants of health (SDOH) as the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age that are primarily responsible for differences in health status. Rivkin Radler’s Robert Iseman recently penned a Thought Leaders’ Corner column for Population Health News in which he made suggestions regarding how healthcare organizations
Read MoreMarch 12, 2019 | Eric D. Fader | Electronic Health Records | Medical Devices and Wearables | Private Insurers
Fitbit and Solera Health announced on March 6 that they have expanded their partnership that seeks to reduce the prevalence of type 2 diabetes. Solera, an integrated benefit network, will make Fitbit devices available to all Solera patients who participate in the National Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP).
In a study, Solera found that its patients
Read MoreMarch 7, 2019 | Fraud and Abuse | Legislation and Public Policy | Medicare and Medicaid
At the Federation of American Hospitals’ 2019 Public Policy Conference on March 4, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma announced the agency’s plan to make dramatic changes to the federal physician self-referral prohibition, commonly known as the Stark Law. The changes are designed to support a value-based model of care in
Read MoreMarch 5, 2019 | Rivkin Rounds Staff | Affordable Care Act | Employer/Employee | Hospitals | Legislation and Public Policy | Private Insurers
A March 1 article in Long Island Business News entitled “Healthcare: The next frontier” discussed the issues raised at a recent roundtable discussion on the current state of the healthcare industry. The panel included Rivkin Radler partners Robert Iseman and Benjamin Malerba; Dr. Zeyad Baker, ProHEALTH Care Associates’ president and CEO; Jeffrey Kraut, executive vice
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