NYeC sets SHIN-NY 2020 HIE roadmap, awards five leaders at gala

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/NYeC-Gala-2017.jpg” thumb_width=”200″ /]The New York eHealth Collaborative’s biennial Gala last Wednesday marked the formal debut of the Statewide Health Information Network for NY (SHIN-NY or ‘shiny’) 2020 Roadmap for development of the state’s Health Information Exchange (HIE). Before an audience of most of NY state’s healthcare organization leaders and key staff, new Executive Director Valerie Grey opened the evening with a topline of the SHIN-NY’s major goals in ensuring a robust HIE supporting value-based care, interoperability including innovations such as blockchain and natural language processing (NLP), public health advocacy, efficiency, and increased affordability. It extends NYeC’s founding goals of connecting providers and achieving the Triple Aim (improved patient experience, population health, at a lower per capita cost–which we don’t hear much about anymore). The full text of the Roadmap is available for download here.

NYeC recognized five healthcare leaders:

Transformative Leader: David Blumenthal, MD, President of The Commonwealth Fund, who is past Information and Innovation Officer at Partners Healthcare in Boston. The Commonwealth Fund is an independent research entity on health and social issues. Most recently, this Editor reviewed their paper on Spanish-language telemedicine assistance services [16 Aug]. Dr. Blumenthal noted the transformative spread of health records, to where a younger generation cannot conceive of dependency on written charts, and access of patients to their personal health records. He also noted the lack of system interoperability and usability. Will there be a disruptive entrant as he predicts in the future?

Honorees:

James (Jim) R. Tallon, Jr., former president of the United Hospital Fund of NY and former chairman of The Commonwealth Fund. He recounted the early years of NYeC (as a board member). In looking at the future, he hopes we can find our way to a more effective public policy. Overall, he believes that healthcare will be better organized and benefit more people. 

Paul Macielak, Esq., president and CEO of the NY State Health Plan Association which represents 29 NYS health plans, discussed the benefits of building out ‘the next mile’ — the HIE for the Capital (Albany) region for the consumer and the provider communities.

Patrick Roohan, VP Data Management and Analytic Solutions, MVP Health Care, was formerly the state Deputy Commissioner/Director of the Office of Quality and Patient Safety. He noted healthcare’s growth through technology and the effect it will have on quality and safety.

The night’s final honoree was Eugene (Gene) Heslin, MD, First Deputy Commissioner of the NY State Department of Health (DOH) and a family practice physician from Saugerties. (more…)

NYeC’s 2017 Gala and Awards (NYC) 1 November

Wednesday, 1 November at the Edison Ballroom, NYC, 6:30pm

The New York eHealth Collaborative, which promotes healthcare in NY State and elsewhere by leading, connecting, and integrating health information exchanges in New York, will again host their annual evening Gala and Awards in NYC. This year the lead award (Transformative Leadership) will be awarded to David Blumenthal, MD, President of The Commonwealth Fund (the home of the Triple Aim). Having been to this event in the past, it is attended by the leadership of most major health organizations in New York such as New York-Presbyterian, NYU-Langone, Maimonides, and payers such as Aetna. Click here for more information and for tickets. The revenues support the work of NYeC in promoting interoperability through entities such as the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY), which links New York’s eight regional health information organizations (RHIOs) or Qualified Entities (QEs) throughout the state. They also fund NYeC’s work in developing policies and standards supporting the use of health IT and EHR adoption. Hat tip to Jesse Giuliani of NYeC and Sarianne Gruber of Answers Media.

FDA’s ‘ossification tango’ side 2: what’s the social cost?

Catching up in the back file of articles is another in Bradley Merrill Thompson’s (Epstein Becker Green) series in Mobihealthnews on how the FDA is biased, by its very structure, against novel healthcare technology even if low risk. He further reflects on what’s truly novel, and what’s not. ‘Novel’ means Class III clearance and potentially millions of dollars. to gain it. He reckons that 80 percent of new digital health technology doesn’t qualify as ‘new’ in a regulatory sense–it may be ingenious in transferring the color reading of a test strip to, for instance, a smartphone and an analytic back end. All the new technology has to do is to demonstrate equivalence to the clunky traditional test–in other words, incremental improvement. What he’s worried about is the 20 percent that don’t fit any FDA classification, in particular software that automates what professionals do, repurposing non-healthcare technology for healthcare use (e.g. videogames for ADHD) or algorithms that automate what’s been done manually through a different method. The social cost is that the most in need, who would benefit from novel health tech that cuts cost and improves quality for individuals and populations (that old Triple Aim), will forever be blocked from having it by regulation. “We need a new paradigm where new technology is quickly evaluated for potential risk, and placed promptly into an appropriate regulatory category.”

There are certainly regulatory parallels ex-US. Much more here to ponder for your Weekend Reading.

Previously and related by Mr Thompson: Avoiding the FDA health IT-medical device regulatory trap for general IT companiesFDA, new technology approval and the Ossification Tango

UK Department of Health views digital technology, future for the NHS (updated)

A freshly released video starring the Minister of Life Sciences George Freeman MP takes just under three minutes to touch on a dizzying number of aspects of revising a NHS organization structured around 1940s siloed medicine to serve a million new pensioners in the last five years and to ease the burden of chronic disease. There are the usual echoes of the Triple Aim:  to be more ‘seamless’ and improve both patient treatment and their experience; precision (and early) diagnosis; to keep people out of hospital; ‘more health out of every pound spent’; pioneering treatments; new models of care….Embracing digital technology in an integrated health care system.

(Updated) A comment from a reader (anonymous by preference) pointed out that the video wasn’t subtitled for the hearing impaired, which is quite odd coming from the DOH! (The UK has the Equalities Act which may be similar to the US Americans with Disabilities Act.) Google Subtitles produced nonsense. It would also have been helpful for the non-hearing impaired (or accent impaired) to better understand the fast-talking Mr Freeman. (Hat tip to our commenter!)

This Editor would also point out that the echo on the soundtrack (from recording in a room without sound dampening as an actuality) makes Mr Freeman even more difficult to follow. What would have made this a far more powerful video are beginning and end slides setting out and summarizing important points–even better, interstitial point slides (or intertitles). Closing–an email/board for comments–it is publicly funded, after all, and Government transparency is always helpful.

The train, plane and car wreck that is Healthcare.gov and Obamacare

If the ACA and Healthcare.gov were Boeing or Airbus aircraft–they would have been grounded on 3 October.

Wherever you reside in the over 150 countries TTA is read in, if you need more convincing that the US Government is unable to be successful (and Editor Donna is being restrained and charitable) at 99 percent of everything contained in this misbegotten Act, all one needs to do is read our previous coverage and this latest update in the Daily Mail along with their links to their own previous coverage. Are you sure it’s going to be fixed within weeks, Mr. President? This is Obamacare website riddled with garbled messages today

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Except in the minds of White House and HHS planners, the obvious solution would be to STOP: halt the enrollment process, suspend the ACA implementation, restore the right to current coverage for the millions who have been blocked from renewing their current individual coverage and take the entire website down. Rethink all the elements including the coverage structure and the website, send it back to Congress for relegislating and implement a program that works sometime in 2015 IF a way can be found. But no, Americans get piecemeal fixes on a website and system that increase the vulnerability of personal information to hackers and identity theft–and coverage they cannot afford. (And this is only in the individual and small group market. Wait till it applies to large employers–other than unions which have been exempted.) (more…)