On June 29^th, 340 organizations signed a letter urging Congressional leaders to make telehealth flexibilities created during the COVID-19 pandemic permanent. Those signing this multi-stakeholder letter include national and regional organizations representing a full range of health care stakeholders and all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a proposed rule [CMS-1730-P] that proposes routine updates to the home health payment rates for calendar year (CY) 2021, in accordance with existing statutory and regulatory requirements. This proposed rule also includes a proposal to make permanent the regulatory changes related to telecommunications technologies in providing care under the Medicare home health benefit beyond the expiration of the public health emergency (PHE) for the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Read the full CMS fact sheet here

Key Take-Aways:

• Members agreed that expansion of telehealth services as well as broadband funding (especially in rural areas) are necessary for moving forward post-COVID
• All parties agreed in that the policies surrounding originating site and reimbursement for Medicare/Medicaid should be maintained even after the national state of emergency is over
• Biggest issues are surrounding cost containment,

The COVID-19 outbreak caused by the coronavirus has had a profound impact on our healthcare delivery and support systems, our economy, safety and overall way of life. The U.S. healthcare system is still in the throes of COVID-19 mitigation and treatment. As hospitals and health systems look to open their doors to non-COVID patients, what happens to our healthcare delivery system? Healthcare has had to pivot and did in many cases in ways never thought possible. The question remains - do we or can we go back to the way things were?

In this one and a half hour panel, we will discuss how healthcare providers, payers, pharmacies and life sciences businesses have shifted in how they provide care and services and what will be the long-term impact for our healthcare systems.

Speakers: 

Josh Schoeller​
CEO
Health Care Markets LexisNexis Risk Solutions

Josh Schoeller is an industry thought leader and senior business leader with over 25 years of demonstrated success providing results-oriented operational and technical expertise and organizational direction. He has broad industry and vertical knowledge across Payer, Provider, Life Sciences and Pharmacy healthcare industries and has held key positions in Sales, Product, Operations and Technology leadership roles. Josh currently serves as Senior Vice President and GM of Healthcare. Josh has P&L responsibility and oversees all business functions including Sales, Marketing, Product, Delivery, Market Planning and Engineering for LexisNexis Health Care. Josh has literally grown up in the data hygiene, data integration and analytic decisioning space. His specific domain expertise spans big data, provider and identity data management and integration, application architecture, predictive analytics and decision support. His record of success working with multiple segments across healthcare has provided him the expertise to solve challenges faced by stakeholders at various levels within an organization, leading them to keep the big picture in focus while solving specific problems.

Rich Morino​
Senior Director Strategic Solutions
LexisNexis Risk Solutions

Rich is part of LexisNexis Healthcare’s Strategic Clients team.  In his current role he provides industry and solution expertise on such topics as improving health outcomes, reducing the cost of care, and enabling consumerism. Over the last 20 plus years Rich has focused on the use of analytics and predictive modeling on healthcare and non-healthcare data.  Rich has leveraged this background in industries such as benefit management, statistical software, FWA and HIT.  In addition to LexisNexis Healthcare, Rich has worked as such companies as Optum (then Ingenix) SAS Institute and Change Healthcare (then Emdeon) in roles ranging from Industry Consultant to Sales Management.  Rich is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Ira Klein, MD, MBA, FACP
Senior Director of Quality, Strategy Customer Group
Johnson & Johnson

Ira Klein, MD, MBA, FACP, is the Senior Director of Health Care Quality Strategy in the Strategic Customer Group of J&J Health Care Services, advancing Janssen’s ability to deliver industry-leading value-based solutions to the new value-based marketplace. This work is facilitated by a personal record of having worked on a variety of national quality and policy committees in D.C., and with many medical specialty societies and patient advocacy groups. Previously, he was the National Medical Director for Clinical Thought Leadership at Aetna, capping a 10 year career in the National Payer space. During this time, he founded the Oncology Solutions team, creating and administering value based and medical home contracts in oncology, as well overseeing advanced analytics in population health for large self-insured employers.

Prior to Aetna, he led the quality, cost and care management area for the Bayshore Community Health System, including inpatient, outpatient, sub-acute, and long term care services. Prior to that, he was CMO of Elderplan, a CMS enacted Medicare Demonstration Project in NYC serving the frail elderly. He began his career practicing Internal Medicine for 7 years at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School as an Assistant Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine.

Ira holds a BS from Rutgers University College of Pharmacy, an MD from University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey – Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and an MBA from Rutgers University, graduating with honors from all three programs.

Mike Archuleta
CIO, Bridgecare Health Network, Mt. St. Raphael

Recognized as a Top Hospital and Health System CIO to know and named a Rising Star in Healthcare, Michael has extensive experience and a proven track record of driving increased levels of productivity, profits, high integrity customer relationship skills and expert problem-solving approaches. Michael currently serves on the advisory board for Prime Health and as a technology advisor for Self Care Catalyst. He is also an active member of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, a cybersecurity advisor to several healthcare startups and an active Speaker within the field of Health Information Technology.

Under Michael’s guidance and leadership, Mt San Rafael Hospital became one of the leading hospitals in the State of Colorado for leveraging advanced technology to enhance the patient and provider experience. With Michael’s innovative, driven approach, the hospital met HIMSS Analytics Stage Six recognition on the eight-stage HIMSS Analytics Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model, a feat only reached by thirty percent of U.S. hospitals. Leveraging advanced Information Technology to improve performance for value-based health care in the areas of infrastructure, business, administrative management, quality, safety, and clinical integration the Information Technology Department has also been presented the 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 Healthcare’s Most Wired Award which is given annually to the top hospitals in the country making the most progress in the adoption of Health Information Technology. Through Michael’s leadership, Mt. San Rafael achieved recognition as best overall organization from the 2019 Most Wired survey. 

Anupam Goel, MD, MBA
Chief Health Information Officer
UnitedHealthcare Clinical Services

Anupam Goel is UnitedHealthcare Clinical Service’s Chief Health Information Officer. He’s a general internist with additional training in clinical informatics. He was the co-Principal Investigator for the San Diego Beacon Community connecting electronic medical record systems across the metropolitan area. Prior to joining UnitedHealthcare, he was the inpatient chief medical information officer at Advocate Health Care. He led the effort to move physicians from telephone transcription to voice-to-text using smartphones, an initiative that reduced transcription costs by over 50% in one year. He helped the organization win a HIMSS Davies award for using health information technology to drive business objectives. His professional interest is using technology to help individuals make decisions to minimize avoidable disability and sustain behavior change.

Andrew Renda, MD, MPH

Andrew Renda, MD, MPH is regarded within the industry as one of the leaders in clinical and community collaborations around population health strategies. A published author and speaker in the field of social determinants of health and chronic disease, Dr. Renda’s work strives to inform co-created solutions to improve community health. In his current role as Associate Vice President, Population Health for Humana, he leads four population health and social determinants of health work streams: Insights, Strategy & Execution, Analytics & Platforms, and Thought Leadership & Communications.

Dr. Renda has a B.S. in psychology and biology from the University of Kentucky where he was a National Science Foundation Undergraduate Fellow.  He received his medical degree and a diploma in clinical psychiatry from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, followed by a Master’s in Public Health from Harvard University.

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As providers continue to face challenges treating their patients during the pandemic, health technology companies have focused on supporting those on the frontlines during these unprecedented times. From the shift to telehealth to keeping pace with new health IT regulations, electronic health record vendor athenahealth has been at the forefront of supporting and advocating for the providers who use their systems. Join eHI CEO Jennifer Covich Bordenick for a discussion with athenahealth’s Vice President, Government and Regulatory Affairs, Joe Ganley, on how they’ve been pushing for policies to support providers and patients, and what he sees as the future for health technology policy.

A complete picture of the COVID-19 pandemic – including accurate patient demographics, aggregated clinical characteristics, health system monitoring and economic consequences – is critical to preparedness and response at regional, state and national levels. During this webinar, we will look at how important matched patient data along with a comprehensive analytics platform is necessary to support stakeholders across the ecosystem to inform in “real-time” life-saving decisions during a time of unprecedented need.  Don’t miss this discussion as senior health IT members from KPI Ninja and 4medica – One Patient…One Record share “best practices” in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

Speakers:

Vineeth Yeddula​

Co-Founder and CEO KPI Ninja

Co-Founder and CEO of one of the fastest growing healthcare analytics company, KPI Ninja. More than ten years of healthcare experience in leadership, analytics, population health, and performance improvement. A proven leader offering expertise in creating a data-driven, team-based, continuously improving, and patient centered organizational performance improvement culture. ​

Ben Moscovitch

Project Director, Health Information Technology The Pew Charitable Trusts​

Ben Moscovitch directs Pew’s efforts to improve the safety of electronic health records and enhance the exchange of information so health care providers and patients have the data they need to make informed decisions. Previously, Moscovitch worked on Pew’s medical devices project, advancing policy reforms to support innovation, patient safety, and quality improvement.

Harvey Guindi ​ 
Chief Information Officer
HNL Lab Medicine

Harvey Guindi leads the design, development and implementation of Business Technologies by leading the Software Design and Engineering, Project and Product Management, Enterprise Architecture, Support and Infrastructure, Clinical Applications and Client Solutions teams

Gregg Church 
President, 4Medica

Gregg Church is President of 4medica with 20-plus years of health IT experience. He represents 4medica in championing reform initiatives that achieve health IT interoperability, a nationwide patient identifier and matching standardization strategy, and the Clinical Lab 2.0 global movement to redefine laboratory value. Church regularly speaks and hosts roundtables at regulatory and industry conferences, events and public policy think tanks involved in shaping the framework for patient identification, and advocates for the national need to reduce patient duplicate records across disparate systems to less than 1 percent.

CMS updated a video that answers common questions about the expanded Medicare telehealth services benefit during the COVID-19 public health emergency. New information includes how CMS adds services to the list of telehealth services, additional practitioners that can provide telehealth services, and the distant site services that Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) and Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) can provide. Further, the video includes information about audio-only telehealth services, telehealth services that hospitals, nursing homes and home health agencies can provide, along with how to correctly bill for telehealth services.

As we all adjust to teleworking, eHI is working to bring members more virtual learning opportunities. As part of an ongoing series, eHI CEO Jennifer Covich Bordenick will be conducting interviews with healthcare industry experts to discuss, identify and share ideas on how to transform the delivery of healthcare using technology, data and innovation.

Join us for a discussion with Dr. Lisa Ide, MD, MPH, the Chief Medical Officer at Zipnosis to discuss:

• How the COVID-19 pandemic has affected telehealth
• Clinical specialties, outside of urgent care, that have seen increased utilization since the onset of COVID-19
• Predictions for the future of telehealth/healthcare through COVID-19 and beyond
• How health systems best prepare now for future telehealth needs

Dr. Lisa Ide been a practicing physician for over 25 years and is board-certified in occupational medicine. She is a member of Zipnosis’ Clinical Quality Advisory Council, where she is heavily involved in clinical product development..