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Right-To-Die Fight Hits National Stage
Opponents of aid-in-dying laws are claiming a small victory. They won the attention of Congress this week in their battle to stop a growing movement that allows terminally ill patients to get doctors’ prescriptions to end their lives.
The Republican-led effort on Capitol Hill to overturn the District of Columbia’s aid-in-dying law could fail by Friday. But advocates worry the campaign will catalyze a broader effort to fully ban the practice, which is legal in six states and being considered in 22 more.
“The D.C. legislation has catapulted the issue of medical aid in dying onto the federal agenda at a time when Congress has the power to enact a ban on this end-of-life care option nationwide — even criminalizing the practice in the six states where this option is currently authorized,” warned Jessica Grennan, national director of political affairs and advocacy for Compassion & Choices, which supports right-to-die laws.
“If that happens, it will set the end-of-life care movement back to the last century,” Grennan said.
No matter how the effort plays out, both sides agree that the debate on Capitol Hill, featuring a Republican moral protest, could be only a taste of what’s to come.
Memorial Healthcare Systems to pay $5.5M over potential HIPAA violations
Dive Brief:
- Memorial Healthcare Systems has paid HHS $5.5 million to settle potential HIPAA violations, HHS disclosed on Thursday.
- The six-hospital nonprofit system disclosed to HHS’ OCR that 115,143 individuals’ protected health information (PHI) had been impermissibly accessed by employees and impermissibly disclosed to affiliated physician office staff.
- The settlement comes weeks after Children’s Medical Center of Dallas was fined $3.2 million over HIPAA violations.
Memorial Healthcare System provided Healthcare Dive the following statement on the subject:
It’s important to put this settlement in perspective to the fact that this situation happened six years ago, and that Memorial Healthcare System proactively reported the actions of the two employees and the findings of its internal investigation regarding the affiliated physicians’ staff to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights (OCR). Upon learning of the breaches, Memorial quickly acted to implement new, sophisticated technologies designed to monitor use and access of patient data, further restricted access to protect patient information, and enacted new policies and procedures to enhance password security.
Memorial’s February 2017 settlement with the OCR resolves all allegations surrounding these breaches. While Memorial strongly disagrees with many of OCR’s allegations, has admitted no liability and has chosen to settle this case, it nevertheless agrees with the importance OCR places on maintaining the security of patient information. We will continue to vigorously monitor access and use of patient information and maintain rigorous cybersecurity and internal safeguards.
EHR vendors continue to push the nation closer to interoperability
Dive Brief:
- Providers at more than 200 U.S. hospitals and 3,000 clinics can now share patient health information even though they use different EHR vendors, thanks for the Carequality Interoperability Framework, The Sequoia Project collaborative announced this week.
- The hospitals and clinics use EHR software and services from athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Epic, HIETexas, NextGen and SureScripts, which have agreed to the information exchange.
- The Carequality Interoperability Framework, published in December, provides the necessary legal and policy requirements, technical specifications, and governance processes to enable interoperability among different health systems.
Epic to add care management content to its EHRs
http://www.healthcaredive.com/news/epic-to-add-care-management-content-to-its-ehrs/436330/
Dive Brief:
- Epic announced that it will incorporate care management content from xG Health Solutions, which is developed by the Geisinger Health System, into its electronic health records (EHRs).
- xG Health Solutions content helps to guide clinical decision-making with evidence-based assessments and care plans for 60 conditions commonly seen in care management programs, according to the EHR vendor.
- The content should be available to users of Epics Health Planet software, a population management platform, by later this year.
High costs give palliative care increased industry interest
http://www.healthcaredive.com/news/palliative-care-healthcare-costs-investment/436065/
While a nascent industry of for-profit companies is eyeing palliative care, some believe a more viable response would be for health systems to build out internal capacities.
Efforts to improve palliative care are growing as both providers and payers struggle to control costs and provide quality end-of-life care. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation report found roughly 25% of Medicare dollars are spent on beneficiaries in the last year of life for services including hospitalization, post-acute care and hospice.
Palliative care is medical care that’s been customized to meet the needs of people with complex and serious illnesses. The goal is to reduce stress and improve the quality of life for both the patient and their family through pain relief, symptom control and help managing care and basic living tasks. “Palliative care teams are able to pull everyone together into the same room — not only the family but also the many different sub-specialists — and actually have a conversation about what is medically appropriate for this patient, so that the care plan becomes rational and appropriate,” says Center to Advance Palliative Care Director Diane Meier.
Today, nearly all hospitals with more than 300 beds and roughly two-thirds of hospitals with more than 50 beds have palliative care teams. While the size of the U.S. palliative care market is hard to pin down, the combined hospice and palliative care market totals $31 billion and is growing at an annual rate of 1.4%, according to research firm IBISWorld.
Outline of GOP plan to replace ACA has few surprises
http://www.healthcaredive.com/news/outline-of-gop-plan-to-replace-aca-has-few-surprises/436472/
Dive Brief:
- An outline of the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act was leaked Thursday after a meeting among Senate Republicans, The New York Times reports.
- The document is a blueprint modeled after the House Republican’s plan called A Better Way, with age-based tax credits to help people buy insurance and more reliance on health savings accounts.
- President Donald Trump said in a tweet early Friday that repeal and replace of the ACA is “moving fast” and House Speaker Paul Ryan said earlier this week he expects legislation to be introduced possibly as early as next week.
Dive Insight:
The GOP plan leaked Thursday contains few surprises but does leave out some key areas. It makes no mention of changing Medicare into a premium support plan, which Ryan has supported but Trump has been wary of.
The plan also makes no mention of how it would be paid for. Bloomberg has reported, however, that the GOP may be considering capping the tax break on employer-sponsored health insurance. This would be a major tax policy change. Policy analysts tend to support the idea but it could be a tough sell for lawmakers eyeing reelection.
The plan does address Medicaid, and essentially guts the expansion put forward by the ACA. It would roll back the generous cost sharing for states that expand eligibility and give states either a fixed sum per beneficiary or a block grant. Either way, far fewer people would be covered, leading to more uninsured and without access to care.
This could be unpopular, even among fellow Republicans. A handful of GOP governors in expansion states have said the move has improved healthcare access and their state’s economy.
Congress returns Tuesday and Republican leaders will push for legislation to be introduced as soon as they receive more guidance from the Congressional Budget Office, which is scoring some of their proposals.
The Threat From A New And Growing Anxiety In The United States Today: A Physician’s Perspective
This week I heard from a student in her third year of medical school. To date, she has borrowed more than $100,000 to fund her education. She is in the top 10% of her class, with honors in all of her subjects and high scores on her national exams. She would be a valued resident in the most competitive specialty training programs. Her goal is to become a primary care physician and offer her expertise to a diverse set of patients, leveraging the multiple languages she speaks fluently. But because she was born in a Middle Eastern country, she has a problem.
She wrote to me that she suddenly faces uncertainty about her status in the U.S. and about the possibility she will be forced to leave without completing her final year of medical school. Were that to happen, she would have wasted the time and the money she has already had invested. She accepted the reality that as someone from another nation, she would need to be exceptional to fulfill her dream. But now she worries that she could be required to leave no matter how well she performs.
And the same is true for nurses, laboratory technicians and doctors born in other countries but already established in practice in the U.S. The rules they will need to live by in the future are unclear and ever-changing. Which countries will be impacted? Will the requirements to leave apply to individuals on student visas and green cards and even to naturalized citizens?
How Anxiety Is Eclipsing Fear
Imagine how you would feel going to sleep at night worried about what you will read in the newspaper the next morning. Everything you value is at risk, including your health.
A bleak week for Obamacare
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/obamacare-trump-congress-repeal-replace-235074
Aetna’s CEO sees a ‘death spiral’ and the Trump administration’s stabilization plan may be too little, too late.
Cartoon – Are you working towards Obsolescence?
