July 2, 2020 | Telehealth dark side?
INDUSTRY NEWS
POTUS to SCOTUS: Abolish Obamacare
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court late Thursday to overturn the Affordable Care Act. If it is overturned, roughly 23 million Americans could lose coverage. In a brief submitted an hour before a midnight deadline, the administration joined Republican officials in 18 states in arguing that Congress had rendered the law unconstitutional when it removed the individual mandate. The administration doesn’t plan to release a replacement until after the Supreme Court rules, according to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. (The New York Times; Bloomberg Law)
Transparency rule upheld. Now what?
Hospitals need to figure out their next move. Last month, a federal judge dismissed a challenge by hospital groups to a federal rule requiring them to disclose prices they negotiate with insurers. The hospitals are appealing, but, meanwhile, they must start thinking about compliance. “We are six months away from compliance with the rule, and there will be a lift, particularly for smaller hospitals that don’t have a robust IT structure or support,” said Delphine O’Rourke, a partner with Duane Morris, which provides legal counsel to hospital systems. (Fierce Healthcare)
INNOVATION & TRANSFORMATION
CMS’ annual proposed Physician Fee Schedule rule, typically published in July, will recommend permanent telehealth provisions, Emily Yoder, an analyst in the CMS practitioner services division, told attendees at the American Telemedicine Association virtual conference. “The changes that we can make through the standard rule-making process, actions such as adding services to the telehealth list and making those permanent, those will appear in the physician fee rule.” (Fierce Healthcare)
Be aware of telehealth’s dark side
Poorly executed, the rise of telehealth could lead to more disparities, Drs. Matthew Clair, Brian W. Clair and Walter K. Clair warn in a commentary for STAT. For example, virtual encounters could magnify discrimination and mistrust. “Patients may not feel they can fully communicate and providers may be less mindful of guarding against implicit bias based on attributes such as race, ethnicity or educational status.” They call the potential for racism and class bias to be encoded into telehealth algorithms “worrisome.” (STAT News)
CONSUMERS & PROVIDERS
Primary care could lose $15B+ due to COVID
Researchers estimate that primary care practices will lose more than $15 billion due to pandemic-related lost business, the result of missed consultations and services during this time. That’s more than $67,000 of lost revenue this year for each full-time U.S. primary care physician, according to the research, which appeared in Health Affairs. If shelter-in-place policies are re-instituted in November and December, that figure could increase. (Health Affairs)
BCBS of NC to help PCPs—f they move toward value
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina announced plans to help independent primary care practices weather the pandemic—if they move to value-based payment arrangements. The insurer promised lump sum payments to participating primary care practices in 2020 and 2021 to help them weather the COVID-19 pandemic. To qualify, the practices commit to staying open, remaining independent and joining the insurer’s value-based care program by 2021. (Modern Healthcare)
NEW & NOTED
More than you thought: More than 20 million Americans have contracted COVID-19, 10 times more than official counts, according to the CDC. This suggests many people without symptoms have—or had—the disease. (Reuters)
Wash your mouth out! Can oral rinses help stop the spread of COVID-19? Maybe, say researchers, but more research is needed, according to research published in Function. (Medscape)
Ransomware attack: The University of California San Francisco paid $1.14 million to hackers after a June 1 ransomware attack on its medical school’s computer servers. (Becker's Hospital Review)
MULTI-MEDIA
Deaths due to drugs, alcohol and suicide—“deaths of despair”—have been rising over the last couple of decades, and they may climb sharply because of the pandemic. In this webinar, produced by the Commission for Case Manager Certification, Benjamin Miller, PsyD, chief strategy officer of Well Being Trust, discusses the projections and offers insights into how to prevent these deaths. (CCMC webinar)
MARKETVOICES...QUOTES WORTH READING
“Traditional ways of thinking about mental health need to be changed. COVID-19 forces us to examine the things that weren’t working and again, to come up with a different vision and structure of what could work.”—Benjamin Miller, PsyD, chief strategy officer of Well Being Trust, during a webinar for the Commission for Case Manager Certification.