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Regulatory Environment and Policy Trends
News Summaries from Parks Associates about Regulatory Environment and Policy Trends surrounding the Digital Health Industry

• FCC Makes $417 million Grant Money Available for TeleHealth Investment
  The Federal Communication Commission announced on Nov 20 that the agency is appropriating $417 million in telehealth network grants as part of the Rural Health Pilot Program and the money will be distributed in 42 states and three U.S territories. Recipients of the grants are hospitals, clinics, universities and research centers, behavioral health sites, correctional facility clinics, and community health centers. The FCC commissioner Kevin Martin estimated that by the end of the three-year program, about 6,000 healthcare providers would ultimately get connected for telemedicine, electronic medical records and other broadband-based health services
• AMA Endorses Tax Credit for Physicians to Adopt EMR
  Based on an AMA survey in 2007 in which 79% of the physicians respondents endorsed the idea of an EMR tax credit, the American Medical Association's House of Delegates recently recommended that physicians receive a full, refundable tax credit to help them buy and use healthcare information technology. In addition, AMA is to formulate contracting guidelines to help physicians comply with the federal Stark regulations which give the green light to physicians to accept healthcare IT solution from hospitals
• ONCHIT Releases Six Use Cases to Drive Health IT Adoption
  The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has released six prototype use cases of health IT applications for public comments. Among these six cases, two are related to public health initiatives such as epidemic reporting and immunization, the other four are clinical care-focused, including remote care monitoring, remote consultation, and personalized health care, the digital health initiatives that the private sector is also promoting. After the comments on the prototypes are collected, detailed use cases will be published for further comments before standardization and technology harmonization efforts will be initiated to drive adoption.
• Health IT Spending Bill Waits for Reconciliation at the Congress
  Upon the Congress' return from summer recess, two versions of the 2008 Health IT spending bills are pending for reconciliation. The House version, passed on July 11, is to allocate $61.3 million for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONCHIT) , but the Senate version, sent to the full Senate on June 2, would provide ONCHIT with 10 million more. The two chambers must produce a reconciled version before Oct 1, when the new fiscal year kicks in.
• Chronic Conditions to Cause Greatest Health Care Costs Increases
  HealthPartners Research Foundation released results of a new study in the April issue of Disease Management Journal, which projects that chronic conditions will account for the greatest per capita cost increases over the next several decades as a result of the aging U.S. population. Specifically, the study estimated that per capital cost of treating congestive heart failure will increase 75 percent from 2000 to 2050. 48 percent increase is expected for coronary artery disease and 24% for diabetes.
• Healthier U.S. Starts Here: Initiative Unveiled by HHS, CMS Officials
  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on April 20, 2007 launched "A Healthier US Starts Here," an initiative focused on motivating seniors and others with Medicare to make the most of Medicare's preventive services. The initiative will include the Medicare Prevention tour bus that will visit 48 states to promote awareness of preventive care among seniors. Many disease prevention advocates, employers, and civic and state leaders have joined the efforts to promote disease prevention and wellness.
• Thirty Percent of Employers Offer Wellness Programs
  Willis of Tennessee Inc., a Knoxville-based employee benefits brokerage and consulting company, released a survey result on April 20, 2007 showing that 30 percent of U.S. employers now offer a wellness-related program and another 30 percent plan to offer one in the future, according to Knoxville News. However, survey respondents cited financial considerations as the main barrier to offering wellness and disease-management programs. Lack of data supporting such programs is one of the problems in convincing management. Only 23 percent of survey respondents with wellness programs are actually measuring the return on investment
• Half of All British Adults Will Suffer High Blood Pressure by 2025
  A stern warning from the London School of Economics said in a report that 22 million Britons will be affected by high blood pressure, which doubles the risk of dying of a heart attack or stroke. One of the report's authors, Dr Panos Kanavos, warned that if the condition went unnoticed, a significant proportion of adults will be transformed from workers who benefit the economy into "long-term recipients of social benefits with increased healthcare needs".
• Federal Advisory Group to Recommend Rewarding Physicians for EHR Use
  The American Health Information Community on April 25, 2007 accepted in principle a pay-for-performance recommendation from its Electronic Health Records Workgroup that called for federal contracts with health plans and insurers to include provisions to reward physicians for quality performance, including the use of certified electronic health records, according to Government Health IT. AHIC rejected another recommendation from the work group to urge Medicare to increase payments to physicians who use EHRs. The work group will revise the recommendation and could resubmit it after determining whether CMS can set up a differential reimbursement scheme and how "using EHRs" should be defined.
• USDA Steps Up Rural Telemedicine Funding
  Healthcare IT News reported on April 6 that USDA announced that in 2007 it will provide $128 million in loans and grants for telemedicine and distance learning. The federal agency since 2002 has invested more than $166 million in telemedicine and distance learning programs, and about 2,226 health care facilities have used the programs to adopt or develop telemedicine applications.
• California Legislature Amends Telemedicine Bill
  The bill AB 329 originally introduced in the California legislature in February was amended in the Assembly on March 29, 2007. The proposed legislation would enable the Medical Board of California to regulate the practice of telemedicine, authorize the Board to establish a pilot program to expand telemedicine, and create a working group to find ways to best deliver healthcare to individuals with chronic diseases using health IT. The bill would require the board to make recommendations to the legislature on or before January 1, 2009, and include ways to improve healthcare services.
• CMS Releases Details on Pay-for-Performance Bonuses
  CMS has released 74 performance quality measures that will determine 2007 bonuses for physicians who treat Medicare patients, according to Government Health IT’s article on April 5, 2007. The quality measures are part of CMS' voluntary Physician Quality Reporting Initiative, which provides an additional payment of up to 1.5% to physicians who report quality data. The first period of the reporting initiative is from July 1 through Dec. 31. Participating providers report on measures relevant to their patient care by submitting the quality-data codes associated with the Medicare claims forms. CMS noted that the 2007 quality data will not be publicly reported.
• Hospital Errors Continue to Drift Higher
  HealthGrades, an online health quality rating and benchmarking company, released a study on April 2 showing that patient safety incidents in U.S. hospitals increased by 3% from 2003 to 2005, but top-performing hospitals had a 40% lower rate of medical errors compared with the worst performing hospitals. For the study, researchers examined the records of Medicare beneficiaries treated at nearly 5,000 hospitals between 2003 and 2005. About 1.16 million preventable patient safety incidents occurred in 40.6 million hospitalizations of Medicare beneficiaries from 2003 through 2005. However, the report found that between 2003 and 2005 patient safety problems worsened by 2.03 incidents per 1,000 hospitalizations. According to the report, 247,662 deaths could have been prevented during those years if hospitals had made fewer medical mistakes.
• Baby Boomers Expect to Drive Up Health Care Spending
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