On Wednesday, February 17^th, the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Communications & Technology held a virtual hearing entitled Connecting America: Broadband Solutions to Pandemic Problems. eHI strongly supports investment in broadband infrastructure in order to ensure all patients are able to access the care they need and know this is an area of interest to many members. 

With a new session of Congress and new administration, there is a lot of health policy news to keep track of this year! That is why eHI will hold monthly policy briefings this year for members on the third Tuesday of each month to learn from policymakers, staff, and health policy experts and discuss timely issues and their impact on health IT and digital health.

In this briefing, Megan Herber, Director at Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP, joins eHI for a discussion on health policy during President Biden’s first 100 days – what’s happened so far and what’s on deck.

eHI hosted its Annual Meeting from January 26-28th. Five panels discussed lessons learned, industry best practices, and how we move toward a more modern, technology-enabled, and equitable health care system. Panels of experts explored topics related to social determinants of health, health data privacy, policy and advocacy, and modern health care delivery.

For full biographies of panelists, click here.

Links to all videos below. 

eHI CEO Jen Covich Bordenick Interviews Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV)

eHI was thrilled to host Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) for a conversation on healthcare, data privacy, and the importance of federal policy to ensure transparency to the consumer.

Panel #1: TGI2021: Where Are We Heading This Year: 

eHI CEO Jen Covich Bordenick was joined by outgoing Board Chair Dr. Susan Turney, President & CEO of Marshfield Clinic Health System, and incoming Board Chair Amy McDonough, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Fitbit Health Solutions. They discussed expectations for 2021, as well as wearable technology and a discussion on equality in healthcare providers.

"While attitudes have thankfully changed dramatically, we have not arrived at a fully equitable society."

- Dr. Susan Turney

Panel #2: Prioritizing Equality in COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution

eHI's Director of Strategy and Programs Wanneh Dixon joined Damika Barr, JD from Verily Life Sciences, Anna Basevich from Arcadia, J. Michael McGinnis, MD, MA, MPP from the National Academy of Medicine, and Diana Zuskov from LexisNexis Risk Solutions for a discussion on how to engage underserved communities in COVID-19 vaccine distribution and using data-driven approaches to close gaps in health equity.

"I think the biggest takeaway is that there is a lot of data out there and I think we're getting to the point where everyone is convinced data is important, but making it actionable and connecting it down to one individual that you can look at an entire data story for."

- Diana Zuskov

Panel #3: Virtual Care Delivery During COVID-19 and Beyond

eHI CEO Jen Covich Bordenick joined experts Saurabha Bhatnagar, MD of United Healthcare, Adam Pellegrini of CVS Health, and Roy Schoenberg, MD of Amwell. Panelists discussed how their organizations have scaled virtual care delivery during COVID-19 and how they envision the future of health care post-COVID-19.

"For the next generation of telehealth that we want to be known for it has to be built differently to allow for innovation of others to collaborate inside the telehealth encounters or surrounding the telehealth encounters."

- Dr. Roy Schoenberg 

Panel #4: Protecting “Health-ish” Data: Balancing Innovation and Health Data Privacy

eHI's Vice President and Senior Counsel Alice Leiter joined Jodi Daniel, Partner at Crowell & Moring; Laura Hoffman, Assistant Direction of Federal Affairs at the AMA; and Liz Salmi, Senior Strategist, Research Communication at OpenNotes and Senior Multimedia Communications Director at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Panelists talked about the challenging balance of shoring up legal protections for the increasing amounts of non-HIPAA-covered health data, establishing consumer trust in new technologies, and encouraging innovation in health care and health tech.

"[With respect to the digital Covid contact tracing apps]... There was a great idea, a great need to try to supplement traditional contact tracing for public health purposes with the outbreak of Covid with digital apps and smartphone apps that could use different types of functionality on your phone ...to alert folks when they were exposed to Covid. Unfortunately, we saw with a lot of the early rollouts of those apps that people didn't trust what would happen to the information they provided."

- Laura Hoffman

Upcoming Webinar: Release of the Final Consumer Privacy Framework for Health Data. We are delighted to release our final proposal to shore up protections for non-HIPAA-covered health information and share our plans for phase 2 of our work. Please join us and our colleagues from the Center for Democracy and Technology on February 9 at 2:00. 

Panel #5: Digital Health Policy: Have We Reached a Turning Point?

The last panel of the Annual Meeting was moderated by eHI’s Assistant Vice President of Policy, Catherine Pugh. Catherine was joined by Aashima Gupta, Director, Global Healthcare Strategy and Solutions at Google Cloud; Matthew Roman, Chief Digital Strategy Officer at Duke University Health System; and Dr. Mona Siddiqui, Senior Vice President, Clinical Strategy & Quality at Humana for a discussion on the impact of COVID-19 on health policy, lessons learned, and how we move forward to build a more effective, efficient, and equitable health care system​. 

“I think digital should have a level playing field and I think there’s often been just a much higher bar to get some things approved than in-person care, so my hope is that people begin to see last year as a proof point of what’s possible and continue to enable greater access to care for people through technology and through digital solutions.”

- Dr. Mona Siddiqui

On Monday, January 4^th, eHI submitted comments in response to a proposed rule from the Department of Health & Human Services and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services entitled Reducing Provider and Patient Burden by Improving Prior Authorization Processes, and Promoting Patients’ Electronic Access to Health Information. 

Download eHI's full comments below. 

Today, Congress passed year-end legislation to fund the government through the rest of Fiscal Year 2021 and provide additional COVID relief. In addition to these provisions, the legislation also included major health-related policies. You can find the full bill text here and key takeaways and section-by-section summaries below.
 

FY2021 provisions at a glance:

• Provides $23.395 billion in discretionary funding, $217 million above the FY 2020 enacted level
• Includes $730 million for the expansion of broadband service, including $250 million to the FCC to carry out the temporary telehealth pilot program authorized under the CARES Act
• $42.9 billion for NIH, an increase of $1.25 billion above the 2020 enacted level
• $7.9 billion for CDC, an increase of $125 million above the 2020 enacted level
• $6 billion for SAMHSA, an increase of $133 million above the 2020 enacted level

Find a full section-by-section summary here.
 

COVID relief provisions at a glance:

• Extends Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and restores the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation to all state and federal unemployment benefits at $300/week through March 14, 2021
• Provides a refundable $600 tax credit for individuals and $1,200 for married filing jointly. The credit phaseout begins at $75,000 of modified adjusted gross income ($112,500 for heads of household and $150,000 for married filing jointly) at a rate of $5 per $100 of additional income. Payments will be based on 2019 federal tax returns.
• Creates a second loan from the Paycheck Protection Program with a maximum amount of $2 million/loan
• Authorizes $15 billion for the SBA to make grants to shuttered venue operators (live entertainment, museums, etc.)
• Provides $25 billion to state and local entities for emergency rental assistance

Find a full section-by-section summary here.

Health care provisions at a glance:

• Provides a three-month delay of Medicare sequester payment reductions through March 31, 2021
• $20 billion for production of vaccines and therapeutics
• $8.75 billion for distribution of vaccines and $3 billion for the national stockpile
• Ends the practice of surprise medical billing, including air ambulances, and allows for independent arbitration and dispute resolution between the insurer and provider
• Extends Medicare, Medicaid, and public health programs for three years:
  
  • Community Health Centers
  • Teaching Health Centers
  • Diabetes Programs
  • Eliminates DSH reductions through 2023
• Permanently removes Medicare telehealth reimbursement restrictions for behavioral health services
  
  • Patient must have been seen in-person by provider furnishing telehealth services within the prior six months
• Requires Medicare Part D plans to incorporate real-time benefit tools that are capable of integrating with electronic prescribing and electronic health record systems of prescribing health care providers for the transmission of formulary and benefit information in real-time to such providers
  
  • Amends the definition of qualified electronic health record under the Public Health Service Act to say that a qualified EHR “includes, or is capable of including, a real-time benefit tool that conveys patient-specific real-time cost and coverage information with respect to prescription drugs that, with respect to any health information technology certified for electronic prescribing, the technology shall be capable of incorporating the information described…”
• Requires the HHS Secretary, through the Director of the CDC, to expand, modernize, improve, and sustain applicable public health data systems, including with respect to interoperability and improvement of such systems

Find a summary of all Medicare, Medicaid, and public health provisions here. 

Key takeaways from the panel:

• Many healthcare institutions saw a large spike in the utilization of telehealth services beginning in March 2020.
• While the current administration has provided waivers and flexibilities surrounding telehealth reimbursement, many of these will end as soon as the public health emergency (PHE) period ends.
• Regulatory priorities should be surrounding areas such as reimbursement, licensure, broadband equity, and DEA prescribing issues.
• Although telehealth has been an instrumental tool in providing greater access to care, some on Capitol Hill and in the administration still cite significant concerns about telehealth costs/utilization as well as fraud, waste, and abuse.
• Behavioral health is another area where telehealth proved to be beneficial. The demand for telebehavioral health services is still high; however, workforce shortage issues, which were a problem before the pandemic, have continued.